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Windows 10


TheRevanchist
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  • 3 months later...

I've enjoyed the Tech Preview, so if they did the £15 thing again I'd likely have dived on that. Free sweetens the deal even more so assuming it's not free cos they'll subsidise it chocking the OS full of adverts or some other subscription shit (it does seem a bit too good to be a true. The whole "if something is free you're the product" type deal)

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Maybe unification is that important that Microsoft is willing to eat the cost for a year. It certainly will make support easier if most people gravitate to the latest version. Worse case for them is if 10 comes out and 8.1 becomes the runt of the current main Windows version (7, 8 and 10). It's quite a juggle to support that, I think. So a free upgrade can squash most of Windows 8 users and a good chunk of 7's. 

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Also, generally speaking what percent of their sales usually come from individuals upgrading the OS on an existing computer?  Probably not many.

 

This is assuming the free upgrade doesn't apply to business users, which I can't imagine it would.

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Maybe unification is that important that Microsoft is willing to eat the cost for a year. It certainly will make support easier if most people gravitate to the latest version. Worse case for them is if 10 comes out and 8.1 becomes the runt of the current main Windows version (7, 8 and 10). It's quite a juggle to support that, I think. So a free upgrade can squash most of Windows 8 users and a good chunk of 7's. 

 

Not to mention that free support is over for Windows 7 so if you're the type who actually contacts Microsoft with questions that's now extended. So they make it easier to keep more people happy while earning money through apps and Office and whatnot.

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The Windows Blog just says it's a free upgrade for customers running 7, 8 or 8.1, no mention of home or business customers being separate.

 

http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2015/01/21/the-next-generation-of-windows-windows-10/

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I am surprised, but it appears the free upgrade offer is good for business ("enterprise") customers, too. The post does have a caveat that "some editions are excluded." It's not clear whether that's editions of Windows 10 that won't be available for free or that some editions of 7 and 8 aren't eligible for the free upgrade.

 

I imagine that the free upgrade may be to a hobbled or barebones Windows 10 that lacks important features.

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General theory is it's cos Win 8 sales sucked so bad, so trying to charge again might not go down so well. On top of that I think they're now the only OS with a charge, last few versions of OSX have been free (prior being about £30 a pop iirc, which might have pushed the £15 thing for Windows 8), and Android, Linux n iOS have always been free updates. Given they've the store on their now it gives them a different way to directly monetise from the OS, though I'm not sure how popular it has been for paid software. But there's other services as well on top like Office365 with a regular cost to them which they could maybe push more with Win 10.

 

Editions excluded from upgrade might include stuff like Windows N Edition and similar which were pretty much only in existence for ticking legal boxes.

 

As for the business customers; most businesses don't immediately jump on a new edition of an OS (hence many only shifting to Win 7 in the past few years from XP, and even less being on Win 8), so a large chunk of upgrading businesses are likely to be out the one year window and MS will know that. 

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  • 1 month later...

So probably everyone has heard, but it seems Windows 10 upgrade is available to even pirated versions (with some strings attached)

 

http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/19/microsoft-windows-10-upgrade-policy/?ncid=rss_truncated&utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=webfeeds

 

I'm not really sure why this comes as a shock. Sure its a bold move, but if windows is going to go paid minor updates rather than a large new OS every so often (ala OSX), giving a free upgrade to a pirated copies of 7/8/what ever ensures that if they want to ensure a larger legitimate user base.

 

Its not like they'll lose any money when they are already giving away free updates to anyone with 7/8 anyhow.

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1. Enterprise software (office et al) is likely going to be a subscription deal (like Adobe is now).

2. Most OS sales are to OEMs and not end users.

3. Most sales of Office licenses are to businesses and not end users.

 

Given the above, it makes sense for MS to give software away to people who might want it (end users) and sell it to people who need it (businesses). Plus, giving 10 away for free guarantees they'll get back most of their market share.

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https://products.office.com/en-gb/office-365-home

 

MS already does Office as a subscription service. They are now ran by the guy that used to run the Cloud & Enterprise Group, I think they're going to hit the SaaS side of things pretty hard going forwards. It works for a lot of companies already, a big one being Google with their "Google For Business" aka Drive, Docs, et al.

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https://products.office.com/en-gb/office-365-home

 

MS already does Office as a subscription service. They are now ran by the guy that used to run the Cloud & Enterprise Group, I think they're going to hit the SaaS side of things pretty hard going forwards. It works for a lot of companies already, a big one being Google with their "Google For Business" aka Drive, Docs, et al.

 

Sorry, I wasn't clear, I meant the whole MS business experience, OS, Office, Servers, everything MS will be subscription based (if it isn't already).

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  • 1 month later...

Microsoft are showing just how much they care about PC gaming with Windows 10 which means it'll come with hugely popular game....Candy Crush Saga!

 

http://news.xbox.com/2015/05/games-candy-crush-saga-is-coming-to-windows-10

 

They even make frequent reference to its role as a mobile game too. MS have a bunch of older PC titles, heck even some F2P newer stuff like Age of Empires, why not use something like that?

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Lol at it linking to your android and ios but not windows phone. With then sounding like they must have done some sort of deal with king to have it install automatically with windows 10 you'd have thought they could have made king port it to windows phone

 

anyway, looks like the first thing I'll be doing after the upgrade is uninstalling that game

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