Amazon: Make Us Your Windows 7 Reseller

In one e-mail blast Tuesday morning that went out directly to its technology customers, the Seattle-based online giant writes a reminder that its customers can preorder the forthcoming OS and select "release-date delivery" during online checkout. Still, there's no evidence yet that Amazon will get any particular breaks on pricing that will be passed on to end customers: it's pricing Windows 7 Professional at $299.

That's not exactly a steep discount off Microsoft's list price of, uh, $299. But the retailer notes that "if the Amazon.com price decreases between your order time and the end of the day of the release date, you'll receive the lowest price."

Now it's one thing to offer time-of-launch delivery to customers, which Amazon seems to have prepared for well. (After all, it has listed Windows 7 for preorder on its site since June.) But Amazon has never been in the software support business -- and the company doesn't clearly tell customers what they should do if they run into installation or upgrade problems, or problems with application compatibility.

But, then again, what could possibly go wrong?