The upcoming Windows 7 Family Pack will be priced at $149.99, and it will be available for purchase in stores upon the operating system's Oct. 22 launch, Microsoft said this morning.

The Family Pack, which will let PC users upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium on up to three existing Windows Vista or XP computers, represents a discount of more than $200 from buying the Windows 7 Home Premium upgrades individually.

It's one of a series of steps Microsoft is taking to make the new operating system more affordable. The company is trying to pull off a successful Windows 7 launch, reviving its flagship product, in the middle of the turbulent economy.

"Our goal is to make sure customers can easily move up to Windows 7 Home Premium on a bunch of different PCs," said Microsoft's Michelle Haven, a product manager in the Windows business group.

Microsoft today also announced pricing and details for Windows 7's implementation of Windows Anytime Upgrade, which lets people with a lower-priced Windows 7 edition shift subsequently to a Windows 7 edition with more features, without having to use an installation disc.

For example, upgrading from Windows 7 Starter Edition to Windows 7 Home Premium adds features including Media Center PC capabilities and advanced Windows graphics. Going from Home Premium to Professional adds business-related features.

In many cases, Microsoft has reduced the price of the Windows Anytime Upgrade for Windows 7 when compared to shifting between similar Windows Vista editions. For example, going from Windows 7 Starter to Windows 7 Ultimate will cost $164.99, about 17 percent less than moving between comparable Windows Vista editions. Moving from Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 7 Ultimate will cost $139.99, about 12 percent less, and going from Windows 7 Professional to Windows 7 Ultimate will cost $129.99, about 6 percent less.

Shifting from Windows 7 Home Premium to Professional will cost $89.99 through Windows Anytime Upgrade, and going from Windows 7 Starter to Windows 7 Home Premium will cost $79.99.

See this earlier post for details on standard retail pricing for the new operating system.

Windows Anytime Upgrade takes advantage of the fact that various editions of the operating system are contained in what's known as a single "image," creating the ability to unlock more-advanced editions by purchasing a product key online or in a store. The previous iteration of Windows Anytime Upgrade, introduced with Windows Vista, required the use of an upgrade installation disc.

"This is really taking a lot of the feedback we heard with Windows Vista, and improving the process with Windows 7," Haven said. "We're pretty excited about how simple it will be for any end user to go get it."

In a demonstration this week on Microsoft's Redmond campus, Haven showed how to upgrade from Windows 7 Starter Edition to Windows 7 Home Premium on an Asus Eee PC netbook computer in less than 10 minutes after purchasing a product code online. In some situations, the process could take slightly more than 10 minutes, she said.

In either case, that's significantly less than the 60 to 90 minutes that it can take to use Windows Anytime Upgrade to go from one version of Windows Vista to another.

In Windows 7 Starter Edition, the Start menu will contain a shortcut to the Windows 7 Anytime Upgrade service for a limited time after the lower-end version of the operating system is installed. Users of higher-end versions, such as Windows 7 Home Premium, will be able to find Anytime Upgrade by searching from the Start menu.