Windows 10 free: Why is Microsoft giving away its new operating system?

[SteveRiley]

I think a lot of apps are going to be subscription like Office365 or Adobe CS GO

And this is an enormous benefit to organizations that historically have had to buy their own software. In other words, all of them.

You own a company that makes widgets. You beat your competitors by offering better widgets, lower prices, or some combination of both. When you spend money, you want to spend it on improvements to your widgets.

Why in the world would you want to staff up a complete IT department, filled with people who know nothing about widgets and likely don't care? Most of what happens in modern IT departments is completely orthogonal to the business. It's expensive, it's slow. It never ends -- support staff endlessly cater to servers and desktops. "Undifferentiated heavy lifting," as we called it at Amazon Web Services (I love that phrase).

Subscriptions eliminate a lot of this unnecessary work. Fire up your web browser, go to $EMAIL or $WORDPROCESSOR, and enjoy the latest version continually updated as necessary. The security is better, the availability is better. There is simply no justifiable reason for not using the cloud now for routine (and even not so routine) corporate IT.

[SteveRiley]

From the link Qqmike posted:

“We are upgrading all qualified PCs, genuine and non-genuine, to Windows 10,” says Terry Myerson, Microsoft’s Windows chief, in an interview with Reuters.

Someone must be spiking the water in Redmond.

There is an enormous cost borne by Microsoft and by the public at large that stems from non-genuine installs. Think: cleaning up after massively wide-spread malware infections. Converting everyone to genuine will in the end save a lot of money.

Did the voters of Washington follow the lead of Colorado's voters?

Hey! We can think for ourselves up here in this dank corner of the nation! 'Scuze me while I refill my bong.

[SteveRiley]

Anyone notice if the live stream threw the obligatory Blue Screen of Death? (Sorry, Steve, I couldn't resist! )

Eh, I haven't been following the Win10 news at all. I have like negative infinity interest in it. But if there were blue screens, I wouldn't be surprised!

[ronw]

A couple weeks ago I scrubbed Win7

A perk of retirement I'm looking forward to. It will be with glee that I respond "Yes" to parted's warning that deleting that partition will destroy all data on it. It would be nice if parted detected Windows on the partition and offered a "Hell Yes!" button.

[jpenguin]

I think a lot of apps are going to be subscription like Office365 or Adobe CS GO

[GreyGeek]

A couple weeks ago I scrubbed Win7 off of my Acer and gave the ENTIRE HD to 14.04.
I see no advantage in making endless micro payments to MS. In fact I predicted this move by MS several years ago in a post in which I described Win users doing some word processing and when the they hovered their mouse over a word with a squiggly red line under it they were presented with a popup asking if they'd like to purchase the spell-check feature. The big question being if they'd sell spell-checking based on a renewable subscription or per so many corrections?
In other words, how long will you get to use an app or feature before you are required to "re-subscribe"? The automatic updates will always go on in the background because the app you are using is full-featured, just not fully activated. MS will continue making their billions by nickel and dimeing their sheep.

As as far as Linux goes I have no objections to paying an annual subscription fee for either the distro or access to the repository as long as the result is the same freedoms I have now.

[Qqmike]

July 29th -- now the roll-outs will appear sometime ...

http://lifehacker.com/the-best-new-f...-10-1680904614

More news on Windows 10

Windows 10 is destined to change the way millions of us interact with our computers and gives Microsoft's chief executive, Satya Nadella, the opportunity to steer the company in a new direction.

He describes the OS as "Windows as a Service", which means he plans to release improvements as they become available, via the internet, rather than working towards another "big bang" upgrade in a few years.

Full article here -> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-33637586

So my question is "How many of you will be returning to Windows when 10 is released?"

[Simon]

If I was a software engineer and was going to make an application, game, or whatnot....

I would show them all an incorporate my own bootable OS into my product. So when the consumers asks, "Will it run on my system?". My answer is "Hell yes! It will run on a freaking toaster plugged into a waffle iron!".

End of the OS wars in nutshell.

[jpenguin]

I run Win7 Pro on my other HDD, paid $33 for it; I'll probably upgrade a couple months after it's out. I have a spare copy of 8.1 Pro laying around somewhere- paid $35 for that

[Qqmike]

Come one, come all ...

What kind of mood are you in today?

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Wind...Home%29+on+USB

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Wind...7P3ESBT1W91QZR

[dibl]

Win10 is free to current users of 7 and 8 but I'd wager it won't remain free.

Right. From MS FAQs:

"The retail prices for Windows 10 are the same as Windows 8.1.6. Windows 10 Home is $119.99. Windows 10 Pro is $199.99. And Windows 10 Pro Pack, which enables you to upgrade from Windows 10 Home to Windows 10 Pro, is $99.99. All these are available in stores or online."

[bendy]

Slightly OT, but whilst my home is 100% kubuntu, work is (mostly) windows. We recently installed our first server running windows server 2012, and OMG........ they gave it that stupid windows 8 metro interface! On a server OS! For f**ks sake......

I have never used windows 8, so naturally I wasted hours trying to work out how to do all the simple stuff that worked the same way back to the NT4 days.

I mean..... just....... WHY?

[GreyGeek]

From the link Qqmike posted:

“We are upgrading all qualified PCs, genuine and non-genuine, to Windows 10,” says Terry Myerson, Microsoft’s Windows chief, in an interview with Reuters.

Someone must be spiking the water in Redmond.

Did the voters of Washington follow the lead of Colorado's voters?

[Qqmike]

10-yr life cycle ...
http://www.zdnet.com/article/microso...or-windows-10/