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Computerworld - Microsoft may have denied that it's gouging European customers with its Windows 7 pricing, but an analysis by Computerworld shows that EU buyers will be paying as much as 163% more for some of the company's in-place Anytime Upgrades.

In late June, Bill Veghte, senior vice president for the Windows business group, rejected claims by a British financial newspaper that European consumers would pay more for Windows 7 because of a move it made -- since retracted -- to dump Internet Explorer from the new operating system.

Follow-up messages from Microsoft's public relations firm at the time took exception to a Computerworld story that concluded Europeans would pay up to twice as much as U.S. customers for packaged copies of Windows 7, calling its headline "inaccurate."

But prices of the recently announced Anytime Upgrades are even more expensive for European Union customers. Anytime Upgrades let users move up the Windows 7 edition stack by buying, say, an upgrade from Starter, the version slated for the very cheapest netbooks, to Home Premium simply by purchasing a product key to "unlock" the more expensive edition's features.

Anytime Upgrades will be available starting Oct. 22, the Windows 7 debut date.

Microsoft has pitched the Anytime Upgrades to Wall Street as one way it hopes to boost Windows revenue and has been most aggressive in touting them for netbook owners, who may want to move up to Home Premium. "A customer may purchase a netbook thinking they would primarily use it for e-mail," a Microsoft spokesman said last week. "Over time, they find they are using that netbook as their primary everyday PC. That person then decides they want their netbook to do more."

According to Microsoft's price list, U.K. customers will pay up to 104% more for an Anytime Upgrade, depending on the upgrade chosen. A Starter to Home Premium Anytime Upgrade, for example, is priced 34% higher in the U.K., when British pounds are converted to dollars at the current exchange rate. (U.S. prices include sales tax -- the average combined sales tax burden in the U.S. was 8.6% in 2008 -- for a better comparison with Europe's Value Added Tax, or VAT. That consumption tax is included in Microsoft's U.K. and EU prices.)

The biggest gap between U.S. and U.K. prices is for the Anytime Upgrade from Home Premium to Professional; U.K. buyers will pay more than twice as much. For a Professional-to-Ultimate upgrade, however, the two market's prices are essentially a wash.

Prices listed in euros show an even greater disparity when converted to dollars. The Anytime Upgrade from Home Premium to Professional costs 163% more in France and Germany, for instance, than in the U.S., while the Starter to Professional is 111% more. The most likely scenario, using Anytime Upgrade to bump up from Starter to Home Premium, costs 23% more in the EU.