back to article Free Windows 10 could mean the END for Microsoft and the PC biz

First the good news: Windows 10 will be free – for one year. Microsoft announced upgrades to its next-planned client operating system during an outpouring of PR love and vision on Wednesday. We won't claim the credit for Microsoft’s decision to give its next version of Windows as a free upgrade for 12 months to those on …

Page:

  1. TheVogon

    "Microsoft’s decision to give its next version of Windows as a free upgrade for 12 months"

    It's apparently a chargeable upgrade with an up to one year evaluation period. After that you presumably must pay....

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Exactly. A lot of folk will be hanging on to see what the "free" part of Windows 10 is going to be. It sounds too good to be true, and given MS' healthy income in the past simply from the OS one has to assume there will be a subscription aspect to it.

      But maybe they are more worried about not getting their app-store to the unwashed masses then OEM fees, etc?

      One also has to ask what the OEM terms will be, and are MS now on the back-foot with PC makers looking to diversify in to the cut-throat world Android tablets, Chromebooks, etc?

    2. Platelet

      In respect to "It's apparently a chargeable upgrade with an up to one year evaluation period. After that you presumably must pay...."

      I'm still sceptical but It doesn't sound like that from this from Terry Myerson:

      "This is more than a one-time upgrade: once a Windows device is upgraded to Windows 10, we will continue to keep it current for the supported lifetime of the device"

      1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

        Sounds more like "For the first 12 months after release you can upgrade for nothing, after that you'll have to buy the upgrade if you want it" but once upgraded, you're OK for the life of the product.

        Or in other words "we need some cheap testers" ?

        I wonder if this means that you need a W7 or W8 activation code to activate the "free" upgrade? Might be worth shoving an old spare disk into my W7 laptop to get the "free" upgrade loaded, then pop the W7 one back in while they work the bugs out of W10. When W7 finally dies, W10 will be ready...

        1. Dr. Ellen

          This is why my desktop has changeable drive bays. Put in one hard drive - XP. Put in another, 7. Now I buy another hard drive, download 10 whenever it happens, and my computer will have yet another personality. On their proper drive, all the old (or new) programs will function just fine.If I get tired of it all, I pop in the Ubuntu drive. And it just takes adding a drive bay.

          It's not that easy, with a laptop; it's even harder with a fondleslab. The desktop stays.

          1. e^iπ+1=0

            Missing a trick

            'This is why my desktop has changeable drive bays.'

            Am I missing a trick here? I never physically remove drives from my desktop to boot from another drive, I just boot from that drive. Maybe I should try this and see if my life gets so much easier?

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Missing a trick

              No, you should not. Have a fat disk and many partitions, install Grub. No need to physically change anything.

          2. Van

            Surely it's easier to install all of your disks and disable them in the bios when not needed and/or use a boot loader. Which you can also do on a laptop by emptying the DVD drive bay. Downside is the extra draw of electricity and noise of disks spinning when they wake, upside you can access data from other system's disks.

          3. Roj Blake Silver badge

            Except that your Windows 7 licence is now a Windows 10 licence. You may get an unpleasant surprise when you put your Windows 7 HDD back into your PC

        2. cambsukguy

          You have an entire year - just wait until you are happy that it is stable and then do it - or don't if you are not.

        3. Purple-Stater

          "Or in other words "we need some cheap testers" ?"

          No, when you tell people that they can upgrade for an entire year, it's not because you're looking for testers.

          Based on the little bits I've seen of it, my bets are that Microsoft wants to get as many consumers to W10 ASAP in order to push the Windows Phone connections. If they throw in "free trial subscriptions" to Office 365, that can also be their hook to try to "upgrade" people using older versions of Office as well. MS may finally simply be turning Windows into the "free" core to increase sales of subscription-based items over the long term.

    3. Craigness

      Free forever

      With reputable journalists stating "Windows 10 will be free – for one year" it's easy to be mistaken. They should write something like "upgrading to Windows 10 will free for one year".

      1. Van

        Re: Free forever

        "They should write something like "upgrading to Windows 10 will free for one year"

        As in losing the 'will' to live ? ;)

      2. Alan Denman

        Re:'Reputabe' =

        Trade.

        As in 'trade journalists'. We mainly have myths.

        1. LaeMing

          Supported life of the device

          Simply lasts as long as the Software Supplier (MS in this case) wishes to support the device. Once they decide to not support the device, its supported life is over. QED.

    4. Dan 55 Silver badge
      Stop

      Stop and think a bit, please...

      It means that if you hit the download button from a Windows 7/8/8.1 machine and the date is between the launch date and the launch date + 12 months then it the cost is $0. Otherwise there will be a price attached.

      "We will continue to keep it current for the supported lifetime of the device" - just like XP/Vista/7/8/8.1.

      If you think it's going to lock up after 12 months and ask you for your credit card number like Cryptolocker then you're barking up the wrong tree. It's just not legally possible to do that, the Windows you've got now is yours and can't be taken off you.

      What they may possibly do is charge for updates after the initial support period is over, like many people said should have been done with Windows XP when it was EOL'd.

      1. Paul Shirley

        Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

        "It's just not legally possible to do that, the Windows you've got now is yours and can't be taken off you."

        I suggest you read the upgrade EULA before clicking through, it's possible to give away your current rights even if MS cant unilaterally remove them.

        You don't own your Windows install, you own a licence to it.

        1. Gideon 1

          Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

          "I suggest you read the upgrade EULA before clicking through, it's possible to give away your current rights even if MS cant unilaterally remove them."

          EULA != the law, consumer rights trump EULAs

          1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

            "EULA != the law, consumer rights trump EULAs"

            This may be so for consumer rights depending on your jurisdiction. But consumer rights don't necessarily apply to business purchases. So read the EULA just in case.

          2. Michael Habel

            Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

            EULA != the law, consumer rights trump EULAs

            What exactly does Consumer Law have to do with MicroSofts shady practices? Perhaps the Consumer, being forcibly bent over for the last time, will start to wise up and leave MicroSoft.

            So while the EULA may not trump the Law, per-say I wish you nothing but the best of luck in fighting it. I gather MicroSofts Lawyers, are bigger then your Lawyers.

            1. qtcoder

              Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

              "So while the EULA may not trump the Law, per-say I wish you nothing but the best of luck in fighting it. I gather MicroSofts Lawyers, are bigger then your Lawyers."

              I'll give you an example. Selling your used Windows license is/was illegal according to the EULA, but is legal according to the law of Finland. Microsoft's lawyers cannot do anything about it.

          3. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

            Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

            "EULA != the law, consumer rights trump EULAs"

            Really? You have the money to fund that lawsuit?

        2. MrDamage Silver badge

          You don't own your Windows install, you own a licence to it.

          That all depends on which country you are in. In Australia, software is a product that you own, not a licence that you own.

          Also, given that the EULA only pops up after I have paid my money for the product, this renders the EULA invalid under Australian consumer law, as you cannot impose extra terms and conditions after the point of sale.

          What really interests me though is "the supported lifetime of the product". Given most of the regulars here are technically based folks, odds on at least 90% of us are supporting at least one device that went end-of-life with the manufacturer years ago, but that does not stop us from supporting it.

          Companies and their lawyers like playing semantics, lets see how well they go when end users start playing semantics back at them.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

        The problem is that tricky phrase, "for the supported lifetime of the device". He could easily have said "for the lifetime of the device" if that's what he'd meant, but chose not to - and statements like that aren't made on the hoof, they're carefully prepared in advance. In the absence of any clarification there has to be a suspicion that at some point (when Windows 11 is launched, perhaps) the old hardware will be deemed inadequate to run the equivalent of a Windows 10 Service Pack, and that will be the end of upgrades for the "free" Windows 10.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

          'The problem is that tricky phrase, "for the supported lifetime of the device".'

          I have a VM running W7. It started off as what seemed a reasonable size for a VM which only runs one application for which I don't have as good a substitute on Linux. However every time it got patched it grew and grew. Now, despite applying the "clean system files" option (or whatever it's called) firing up the VM brings up error messages about not having enough room for swap files.

          So maybe "the supported lifetime of the device" means "the time it takes to bloat over all the drive it was installed on".

          1. Ken 16 Silver badge
            Devil

            Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

            It's a VM so just bump up the disk allocation, migrate it to a new host, keep it running forever.

            BTW: Is a VM a Device or a Node (cue Archimate digression)?

          2. bjr

            Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

            A VM is forever. I'm also a Linux user and only run Windows as a VM. You can move the VM to different hardware and different versions of Linux without Windows knowing it's been moved. All you have to do is make sure that the new VM is identical to the old including MAC IDs.

            As for increasing the size of the virtual disk, that's easy. I've done it for an XP VM and it worked fine. Create a larger virtual disk, then in a Linux VM mount both the old WIndows virutal disk and the new larger disk and use DD to copy the old disk to the new one. Use ntfsresize it resize the partition. You can also resize with gparted.

            1. P. Lee

              Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

              >A VM is forever.

              Unless the W10 upgrade invalidates the W7 license. Which would be normal in an upgrade. W7 was the first version of windows to successfully enforce the licensing, so comparisons with XP are likely to be misleading.

              You'd have to be sure it never talked to the MS' license servers to make this work.

          3. Tom 13

            Re: "the time it takes to bloat over all the drive it was installed on"

            Your VM can't grow the drive size to something adequate? Sounds like a software problem to me.

            While it is true that when Bill Gates uttered the infamous phrase that disk space was free it wasn't, these days is pretty much is. Even a cheap laptop comes with a 250G hard drive these days, and even at 81G for all of my installed apps and data on my work system, that's not even 1/3 of the available disk space.

            True, you'll probably have problems with .dll rot and the like, but with MS shunning service packs, these days you'll get that no matter what.

            1. SecretSonOfHG

              Re: "the time it takes to bloat over all the drive it was installed on"

              "Even a cheap laptop comes with a 250G hard drive these days, and even at 81G for all of my installed apps and data on my work system, that's not even 1/3 of the available disk space."

              Yeah, I say that to myself everytime I purchase a new hard disk, only to find six months later that I've managed to fill it up.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

          "The problem is that tricky phrase, "for the supported lifetime of the device""

          There have been clarifications before from Microsoft - was it Office 2013 or W7 OEM or W8??. IIRC you could not re-install the software on the same machine in the case of a hardware failure - unless the machine was still under its supplier's warranty.

          I could see that being a return to factory repair - but not for a home upgrade.

          Office OEM for many years has not been re-installable. The activate stated that the licence didn't permit the new install.

          W7 Retail certainly had more activation restrictions than XP. I fell foul of them when using the well tried XP method of cloning the original system disk - then experimenting to fix a problem using the clone disk. That meant having to experiment with the live disk - in the hope that the clone could be used to recreate the original if the fixes went wrong. Strangely the clone disk itself was accepted as having a legal licence after being on the shelf for 3 months.

      3. Michael Habel
        Big Brother

        Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

        If you think it's going to lock up after 12 months and ask you for your credit card number like Cryptolocker then you're barking up the wrong tree. It's just not legally possible to do that, the Windows you've got now is yours and can't be taken off you.

        Isn't amazing what a few lines of EULA can do? While on the face of it, as things currently stand. You are correct. But, the "Problem" is, that Windows X hasn't hit yet. And, NOBODY, besides their Marketing-Droids know what will happen. If anything this may be their way of holding up a moistened Finger up to see which way the Wind is blowing.

        But, when has that (TIFKAM), ever stopped 'em from making poor decisions before? The simple fact of the matter is that MicroSoft has had a perpetual hard-on for Windows as a Service, for Years now. And its absolutely correct to be paranoid about that.

        The Ultimate Question.... Will be if they can get away with it.... The Answer will of course be no! But, bless their little Hearts for trying anyway.

        If I had actually wanted an OS as a Service.. I'd have gone with a Chrome Book. If this is all the Future has in store for us... Then thank Zarquon for Linux!

      4. Teiwaz

        Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

        Of course it's not going to lock up after the Support period ends. That would be very unhelpful.

        What could happen is Cortana will remind you every so often (every day, unless you boot up more frequently, in which case it'll be a couple of minutes after you login), every time you login) that your support period has expired and that you should renew as soon as possible. This will be Cortana being helpful, and probably count as a 'feature'.

      5. Just Enough
        Facepalm

        Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

        Microsoft realise that the inevitable chaos that would follow any "12 month upgrade trial" expiry, would be a PR and legal nightmare of epic proportions.

        There is no way they are going to entice users off full Windows 7 & 8 licences, and then pull the rug out from under them a year later. It's just not going to happen.

        1. P. Lee

          Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

          >There is no way they are going to entice users off full Windows 7 & 8 licences, and then pull the rug out from under them a year later. It's just not going to happen.

          The question is "who will qualify" - is this just W10 Home Edition? People on W7 don't feel the need to upgrade, so no sale there anyway. If MS start rolling out one version of Windows per year, after one or two years you might lose security fixes without a subscription. That means people on W7 will have had 4-6 years on windows without paying for an upgrade - probably about right, in MS' thinking. The question is, how would MS degrade the experience in general, even if people knew they were buying "W10 as a service"? Drop the screen resolution to 800x600? Nag dialogues every 5 minutes? I can't think of anything acceptable to great-aunt Ethel.

          1. cambsukguy

            Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

            They might make $10 per user in app fees in that timescale, that isn't really any less than the money they get for an OEM license is it?

      6. h3

        Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

        Most people never upgrade the Windows that their device comes with.

        All Microsoft needs is a general consensus that Windows 10 is ok then people buy new PC's with it on.

        1. cambsukguy

          Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

          Indeed.

          I can't believe people (even the ones here) think that MS would ransom machines to get a fee, one time, and then never get another sale.

          Not only are the statements fairly obvious, only misconstrued with malice as far as I can see, they have several plain purposes:

          1. A PR coup to make them look good.

          2. Removal of Windows 8 almost entirely since most will just see it as a normal upgrade (which it is after all) and install it.

          3. Seriously reduce the Windows 7 end of life issue.

          4. Create a lot more possible app purchasers.

          There are more I imagine but that would be enough in my book.

          Bear in mind that most Win7 machines will be long in the tooth soon after and the owners will be looking for new hardware, running, what else? Win10.

          I know, I am one of them, my laptop is already three years old but this will give it a new lease of life, for about a year perhaps.

          1. oldcoder

            Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

            What they do is label you a pirate...

            And then take everything you have...

      7. wdmot

        Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

        @Dan55

        If you think it's going to lock up after 12 months and ask you for your credit card number like Cryptolocker then you're barking up the wrong tree. It's just not legally possible to do that, the Windows you've got now is yours and can't be taken off you.

        Sure they can do that. You don't own Windows, you get a license to use it. They dictate the terms of the license, which can expire. Perhaps after the free 12 months is up, you can't use Windows anymore (although I doubt they would keep you from copying off your data). Or maybe they have a different plan in mind, but they do say they're going for "Windows as a service" which strongly implies limited term licensing like Adobe's doing.

        1. wdmot

          Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

          Apparently I was incorrect in the second part of my comment; MS has confirmed (according to http://www.pcgamer.com/microsoft-windows-10-will-not-be-sold-as-a-subscription/) that it's not going to be a subscription license. Not that they couldn't do that, but as others have pointed out, it would be too confusing for the average user.

          So I'm a bit confused as to what benefit MS gains giving away Windows 10 for the first year. Granted, it's not to all Windows users, or even to all Windows 7/8/8.1 users, but it would still represent a significant loss of potential income. They're a corporation, so bottom line is the main concern. Free word-of-mouth advertising from the early adopters?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Pint

            Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

            Your assuming that all the Windows licensing revenue comes from the consumer and it doesn't even come close. The real revenues come from new computers (OEM), business, and enterprise (there's a bit of distinction between the last two). As the enterprise editions of Windows aren't part of the whole free upgrade process, which may or may not extend only 12 months after release, we really are looking at the first two and not even all of just business customers. Market segmentation 101. Face, most people up until now have waited for yon computer to die and get whatever new version of Windows on it as part of the upgrade. There aren't very many consumers that spring for such directly. I know I'm a pretty rare beast for buying retail Windows. The others I've come into contact with all built their own computers.

            What Microsoft the firm gets out of this is moving the consumers onto their Cloud-First/Mobile-First flavor of Windows at not much loss in revenue thus unifying the split code-base and definitely giving a shot in the arm of methamphetimes to the Windows Store. Do recall one of the selling points (err, features) of Windows 10 is having the Windows Experience follow you from device to device. Hell, I just thought of it actually following you right into your vehicle then into the office, or wherever, as well if it runs Windows as well. (Hear that Google?)

            It's not for me, but I can definitely see the possible synergies (Execs, especially marketing execs, love that word) and I'm sure there are more than a few that we haven't heard all about yet. Don't want to tip off the competition too much, now do we?

            And that calls for a pint.

      8. JEDIDIAH
        Linux

        Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

        > It's just not legally possible to do that,

        Sure it is. This was standard practice for large server operating systems at one time.

        I've been witness to the OS license on a server expiring.

        It's something that may cause a massive consumer backlash if applied to a Microsoft product, but it's perfectly legal and has been done before.

      9. John Tserkezis

        Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

        "It means that if you hit the download button from a Windows 7/8/8.1 machine and the date is between the launch date and the launch date + 12 months then it the cost is $0. Otherwise there will be a price attached."

        Whoa, whoa there. If this means yet another 3Gb+ download for the upgrade for each and every machine, they can get stuffed.

      10. Tom 35

        Re: Stop and think a bit, please...

        "If you think it's going to lock up after 12 months and ask you for your credit card number like Cryptolocker then you're barking up the wrong tree. It's just not legally possible to do that, the Windows you've got now is yours and can't be taken off you."

        Lets See...

        Windows 10 is FREE* for 12 months.

        *Your Windows 10 subscription is $9.95 a month with the first 12 months free, you may cancel your subscription at any time and your computer will switch to Really Annoying Mode with full screen video ads.

        That would be legally possible I think.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Eh?

      "Windows 10 is Microsoft’s make-or-break operating system and Microsoft needs to do everything it can to kick-start adoption and move PC customers on. If Windows 10 goes wrong and people don’t upgrade, that’ll be two Windows busts in succession. That would be terrible for business and for Microsoft."

      This articles whole premise seems off. I've worked for 5000+ organizations as well as startups. At neither did they upgrade the OS's on existing machines when a new version of Windows came out, with the exceptions of a few key machines. The issue when a new version of Windows came out was what to specify when new machines were purchased. Since machines were replaced after they were a few years old (maybe even as old as 5 years old), the "move" to the new version of Windows was really via the OEM route. I'd like to see a revenue breakdown for, say Windows 7, between revenue for OEM licenses of Windows 7, site license upgrade licenses, and over the counter (consumer) upgrade licenses. My bet is that OEM licenses are basically the whole enchilada.

      So yes, Microsoft needs Windows 10 to take over, but it's not like they are not charging for OEM Windows 7 licenses if people order machines with Windows 7.

      I know in my organization, no one is going to order Windows 10 if it uses a subscription model. We already moved away from Adobe products for that reason, and we can't be happier to not be constantly paying Adobe mafia-like "protection money".

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Eh?

        See, you say this, and in the company I work in, they did buy computers that came with Windows 7 Pro, but then separately purchased a volume license to Windows 7 Enterprise. It's quite a large company too, so I doubt it's just them that are doing it.

      2. Code For Broke

        Re: Eh?

        Let me get this straight: at an enterprise you once worked for, with over 5k employees, the IT department supported whatever OEM instance of Windows happened to arrive on the box when it shipped. There was no single image used for the fleet? Did they also light the place with table lamps and heat it with box heaters? Did the cafe serve 100s of different 'specials' each day?

        1. JamesTQuirk

          Re: Eh?

          No, They knew Zip(nothing), they ask those who thought they were IT what to do, where employed because they what a computer or windows was, NOT because they actually knew anything .....

    6. hplasm
      Facepalm

      "It's apparently a chargeable upgrade..."

      I read that as a charitable upgrade...

Page:

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like