According to Amazon, the sales of discounted three-license upgrade is to end by Dec. 31 Amazon, the online retailer states that Microsoft’s three-license Windows 7 Family Pack will not be sold from the next week.

If you want to know what is included in the Family Pack, it entails three upgrade licenses from Windows XP or Vista to Windows 7 Home Premium for the consumers. This pack was sold in the market from early October for $150. During the launch, Microsoft had informed that the deal is offered for a limited time. However, there was no date announced to bring this deal to an end.

Now, it seems like the offer is set to end. On Amazon’s page dedicated to the Family Pack, a note was posted on Friday for the customers to know that the product is likely to be available on sale till December 31 or till the supplies last. This famous online retailer sells the Family Pack for $125.

So, let’s assume that the stop date announced by Amazon is accurate. What is the likely step of Microsoft? It is believed that Microsoft might keep the Family Pack in the market for nearly 13 weeks. This figure is more than twice as long as in 2009. If you are wondering why it is compared with the year 2009, then Microsoft had terminated the sales after about six weeks in the last year.

When Microsoft and other retailers pulled the Family Pack from shelves, they did not send any warning to the customers. This led to a lot of rage amongst the consumers. People who nwere planning to purchase the package were frustrated as they had missed the offer. It was also noticed that a few of the bloggers termed ‘the unexpected disappearance’ as a ‘dumb move’.

For closing the deal before the holidays, the irritated customers apparently nailed Microsoft as a Scrooge. Like last year, Microsoft has still not announced an official end to their three-licensed Family Pack for this year. It was sold till late Friday through its e-store even after the company reiterated the deal as a limited time offer.

The surprising factor of the Family Pack was that it enjoyed the No. 8 spot on Amazon'ssoftware bestseller list, after various other programs like Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Office 2010, TurboTax and Apple's upgrade to Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard.

People preferred purchasing the Family Pack from Amazon because of the price that helped the buyers to save around $205. The retail price of the three separate Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade licenses was much higher than the Amazon’s price.

Statistics from Web measurement vendor Net Applications says that Windows 7 has 19.7%of the world's usage share. With this figure, a rise of 1.4 % points was noticed over October,making it the third-largest one-month gain in 2010.As of now, there is no news from Microsoft about discontinuation of the Family Packs.