Windows 7 came out today, and I found someone willing to sell it to me without a PC attached

Windows 7 came out today.

But I think I've known for sometime that Microsoft Windows isn't really a retail product anymore. It wasn't always this way: Windows 95 received huge promotion. Shops opened at midnight to sell it, and customers were greeted with people in dancing software box costumes. There were line-ups at these events. But that was almost 15 years ago.

Windows is now an industrial component. It is the software that gets loaded on PCs that allows the hardware to do its job. So, when a version of Windows is released, the big story isn't how many copies it will sell but how many computers that contain it will be sold.

And that's pretty much what I saw today. I took a 15-minute walk up to the Yonge & Dundas Future Shop, hoping to buy the 3-license "family pack" edition of Windows 7 Home Premium. I wasn't sure if this particular 3-license edition would be available in-store, and for the past few releases I've always bought the new edition of Windows online, but I thought I'd have a look anyway.

Well, to my surprise, there wasn't much about Windows 7 anywhere in sight. A small sign by the escalator mentioned that you could get PCs with it. At the top of the escalator was a small display -- about 3 x 4 software boxes in size -- that contained only the upgrade version of Windows 7 Home Premium. That was it. No "family pack" edition, no "Professional" edition, and no "Ultimate" edition. Most of the human traffic was over in the notebook section -- presumably to buy notebooks with Windows 7 pre-installed.

I suppose it makes sense to some degree: if a new notebook with Windows 7 pre-loaded can be bought for $500 and a Windows 7 software upgrade costs $130, why not spend the extra $370 and get a new computer along with it? Well, I can think of lots of reasons, but I'm sure none of them are relevant here.

As an aside, I don't understand the layout of that downtown Future Shop store. Space is presumably at a premium for that location, being at one of the busiest downtown intersections, but the store is so spartan and airy that you feel like there is an incredible amount of wasted space. The ceiling height is massive. This is the same building, though, that contains an AMC movie theatre that requires you to go up about 4 escalators to get to your screening theatre.

So, I didn't find what I was looking for.

But then I thought I'd try Staples. There is one buried in the underbelly of Yonge & Adelaide -- much closer to me than was Future Shop, but I was hoping to get in a decent walk at the same time. Although the Staples website gives a physical address for this store -- 1 Adelaide St. East -- there is not actually anything at that address other than a big anonymous building. But I am sufficiently familiar with Toronto's downtown pattern language to correctly assume that it would be at the bottom of an escalator inside the non-descript building -- underground, on the underground walkway. And there it was. And the Windows 7 display was right by the entrance, containing all editions including the one I was looking for.

Mission accomplished.

Now I have to install it.