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Windows 10 as an Internet service?

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superboyac:
I'm guessing (since you can't do much else when it comes to Microsoft licensing) that they mean it in the same way OEM licenses work. Which is to say it's non-transferable to another PC. It's only licensed for the original machine it's installed on. Otherwise, everyone and their cousin would claim a freebie and use it on everything else they buy until Windows 12 comes out.

I suspect they're mostly trying to speed up adoption by the Windows 7 users (remember XP?) without making the Windows 8 users feel like they got taken for a ride like the Vista users did. It's clever too in that because it's free for the first year, corporate IT departments will have a huge amount of trouble justifying to their upper management any decision to stick with 7 if they let the opportunity for that freebie to slip by.

Microsoft certainly isn't doing any of this out of kindness, that's for sure. This is a typical Redmond squeeze play they're making. Just like the hardball offer they tried with Windows 8 - except that upgrade wasn't free. And the early adopter discount offer only lasted a very short time in comparison.
'
I don't like any of what I'm seeing. It feels like the a major 'set-up' is about to go down. And I just hope I end up being wrong about that.
-40hz (January 21, 2015, 04:18 PM)
--- End quote ---
It does feel that way.  I'm confused as well.  For the last few years, all of microsofts products and innovations seem to be underwhelming, from an end-user standpoint.  They have been criticized and it's clear they have lost a lot of market share to smartphones and tablets.  Yet, most of the news about microsoft from the business end is very positive.  Which could be just strategic marketing...BUT, the moves microsoft is making also seems to indicate that they are quite brazenly confident about the future.  So it's a weird situation (in my eyes at least) where MS is very confident as a business, but all their products are kind of sucking.

And furthermore, I feel the zeitgeist of today is prematurely pushing for the eradication of the desktop pc.  I don't understand why we are so eager to get rid of them as a society.  For the longest time, desktop pc's were the territory of the super nerds and geeks...like from the 80s until the iphone era.  With the smartphones, all these people that were not computer people all of a sudden had their eyes opened up to the possibilities they present.  And now we're all over apps and phones and internet of things...but they all still pale in comparison to the desktop.  And the other weird thing is that despite how little talk there is for the desktop and the fascination with the mobile stuff, most people still have a desktop in their home somewhere.

dr_andus:
Thanks for the clarification (shouldn't MS be doing that, though?) ;)

I suspect they're mostly trying to speed up adoption by the Windows 7 users (remember XP?) without making the Windows 8 users feel like they got taken for a ride like the Vista users did. It's clever too in that because it's free for the first year, corporate IT departments will have a huge amount of trouble justifying to their upper management any decision to stick with 7 if they let the opportunity for that freebie to slip by.
-40hz (January 21, 2015, 04:18 PM)
--- End quote ---

I imagine that many of the 'corporates' sticking with XP and Win7 are small businesses, one-man bands, and then consumers. There must be good reasons probably why they stuck with those OS's (e.g. that they run well on their ageing machines). It would make sense to try to get the maximum return on investment on the licenses and hardware. So they might not be that easily fooled by one year of free subscription, especially if it's then not transferable to replacement hardware. The big question is how much the subscription is going to cost afterwards, and whether your current hardware can handle Win10.

dr_andus:
And furthermore, I feel the zeitgeist of today is prematurely pushing for the eradication of the desktop pc.  I don't understand why we are so eager to get rid of them as a society.  For the longest time, desktop pc's were the territory of the super nerds and geeks...like from the 80s until the iphone era.  With the smartphones, all these people that were not computer people all of a sudden had their eyes opened up to the possibilities they present.  And now we're all over apps and phones and internet of things...but they all still pale in comparison to the desktop.  And the other weird thing is that despite how little talk there is for the desktop and the fascination with the mobile stuff, most people still have a desktop in their home somewhere.
-superboyac (January 21, 2015, 04:39 PM)
--- End quote ---

I empathise with what you're saying. But the trend seems to suggest that businesses (such as Apple, MS, Google etc.) had figured out that much more money can be made out of uninformed users who can be continuously milked, than from savvy power users. The tablets and other gadgets are perfect for monetising clueless consumers, while power users are hard to please. Just give Chromebooks and their Windows lite equivalents a bit more time to iron out the hickups (like printing and PDF support), and pretty soon there will be fewer reasons to have a PC at the average home. Let's face it: the readership of DC is a niche audience. I wonder if the price of full-on desktops will start to climb at one point, once they're not subsidised by the mass market....

rgdot:
@40hz
Can you please explain further what leads you to the Linux line you posted? How it relates to today's news?
Serious question, I am not trying to be funny, may be I should read again but don't see the actual connection to something MS said today.

TaoPhoenix:
I imagine that many of the 'corporates' sticking with XP and Win7 are small businesses, one-man bands, and then consumers. There must be good reasons probably why they stuck with those OS's (e.g. that they run well on their ageing machines). It would make sense to try to get the maximum return on investment on the licenses and hardware. So they might not be that easily fooled by one year of free subscription, especially if it's then not transferable to replacement hardware. The big question is how much the subscription is going to cost afterwards, and whether your current hardware can handle Win10.
-dr_andus (January 21, 2015, 04:43 PM)
--- End quote ---

I'll re-iterate the stall power of fear of the computing future. In particular, it seems to take over a year for the "what do we as mid rank tech people think of ____ OS release from MS". MS gets there first with their 10 paid blogs which are then echoed by the 100 news outlets. So for example, we "sorta know" what we think of Win 7, then 8 - and - 8.1

But while a few people on the advanced places (maybe here!) are beginning to scout the Win10 landscape, it still feels really early.

XP isn't running well at all on my DevilComp. And that fan still needs to be replaced. I'm just trying to hold on until we get closer to the real rollout of 10, then the "second line" people will begin posting their news.

I def don't want OS-as-Service. And I don't plan to need to change my hardware more than once. If I have to change my hardware more than once, then I did it wrong. If I do it right, it will sit there until it too decays, just like I am doing now with XP.

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