Microsoft holding Windows 7 hostage?

Someone needs to call out Microsoft for keeping low or out of stock supplies of Windows 7 Family Pack in the retail stores (so I’ll let that person be me).  I checked my local Staples, Best Buy, and Office Depot near Millbrae, CA and all ran out of Family Pack but had boxes and boxes of single machine packs.  The Best Buy folks said that ALL the Best Buys in the Bay Area were out of Family Pack.

In Sugar Land, Texas (several thousand miles away), the scene was no less different with the Best Buy dude mentioning that all the stores in Houston area also being out out stock. What?

I say Microsoft is holding Windows 7 hostage as a profit-making scheme and here’s why.  A 1-machine license of Windows 7 Home Premium costs $119 or so.  Assuming that production costs (after every overhead you can think of) are $34, Microsoft makes $85.  A 3-license Family Pack costs $149 (retail).  Divide by 3 and you get an effective license cost of about $49.  Which means Microsoft makes $15 per device (or $45 on the license pack).

If the desperate family man comes into Best Buy eagerly looking for the much sought after Family Pack (after all he spent $400 on each crappy Vista machine in his home, has 3, and needs to salvage his investment) and can’t find the Family Pack, what’s he to do?  He can either [a] wait indefinitely for new shipment (which doesn’t come) or [b] buy at least 1 single license pack for his main PC and deal with the others later.  What happens then is Microsoft profits $85 on the first machine and on the other 2 makes $30 netting a grand total of $115 over $45.

All this over Microsoft screwing the public over with the unbelievably crappy release of Vista.  Crooks I say.