8 ms·
Only Microsoft would come up with a new security feature and then intentionally and arbitrarily limit its availability to the most expensive version of their OS
by neotek 8y ago
Only Microsoft would come up with a new security feature and then intentionally and arbitrarily limit its availability to the most expensive version of their OS.
This is the same company that thinks putting ads in the fucking file explorer is appropriate on an OS they charge hundreds and hundreds of dollars for.
- apapli 8y agoI’d put oracle in that boat too. Actually, I think it would be hard to find an enterprise software vendor who wouldn’t want to include extra functionality in their premium SKUs as a way to further differentiate them and encourage up-sell.
- franga2000 8y agoExtra functionality yes, but not a security feature. I'd understand making WSL or PowerShell a >= Pro feature, but something that is designed to secure users from malicious applications. That should be included with even the lowest SKU that can run win32 (its sad that this last qualifier is even required).
- TeMPOraL 8y agoThat's OK when you put enterprise features in enterprise versions. A regular user doesn't need to be able to run SharePoint, but they might want to get proper sandboxing of regular software.
- lionpixel 8y agoI paid 13€ for an Microsoft Windows 10 Pro OEM key. I thought everyone is doing this as well?
- ToFab123 8y agoI use a windows 8 retail key
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoLast time I tried a (legitimately owned) Windows 7 Ultimate key (around 6 months ago?) it still happily activated Windows 10 despite no longer being "officially" supported.
- Improvotter 8y agoI paid 0 EUR for Linux. My school works with Windows stuff and Microsoft doesn't even provide us with free keys. It's ridiculous. Let's just keep all school stuff open source.
- MarkMc 8y agoWhere did you buy such a cheap copy of Windows 10 Pro?
- lbeltrame 8y agoThose are digital (unused) licenses, that although can't technically be resold, they "can" be in Europe as they contradict a ruling made in 2012 (I don't have time to dig the link up, unfortunately).
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoTo be fair they aren't necessarily unused. I made the mistake of buying one once and had to jump through a lot of hoops to get Microsoft to activate it. I'm still not sure that it was entirely legal, if I'm honest.
- Strom 8y agoThose cheap licenses are always used. They exploit the fact that these can be used to activate ~10 copies of Windows. It's even worse than that though. One seller could keep track of this limit, but what happens is that a bunch of sellers source their keys from other similar sellers. So they don't even know how many times a key has been used. Last time I bought one of these 15€ keys for a friend, I had to write to the customer support over 10 times and shuffle through at least 6 different keys until one actually worked.
- Jyaif 8y agoWhere did you get such a deal?
- lloeki 8y agoPower of defaults. People have Home, they stay on it. Nonetheless, if you can go from Home to Pro with 13€ it feels quite ridiculous that there is a Home/Pro distinction at all from the very start.
- juhzy 8y agoI paid 0€ for the LTSB version just by changing the KMS server. I thought everyone is doing this!
- setquk 8y agoI wouldn’t worry because it won’t work anyway so you’re not losing anything. When they introduced Virtual Secure Mode in windows 10 with big fanfare, there was a CVE that followed almost immediately. The case in point is it’s putting lipstick on a pig at this point. Every change that is made comes with another security or friction factor. Every problem solved creates two more. They need to stop adding shit to it and fix what is already there.
- Garbage 8y agoI believe it's because the virtualization support is only limited to those versions. I might be wrong though.
- saagarjha 8y agoIsn’t this basically a virtual machine, though? I don’t see anything special that you’d need a more expensive version of Windows for. This should be using your processor’s virtualization capabilities, right?
- epse 8y agoYeah, but it uses their Hyper-V hypervisor, which is limited to the Pro and Enterprise versions for no reason other than money.
- kungito 8y agoWhat other reason would there be to put an advanced feature in a more expensive version of something?
- analognoise 8y agoAgreed. Every time somebody complains about Microsoft doing business shrewdly and increasing their value to customers, I think "This is wht Linux never captured the desktop."
- neotek 8y agoI don't get it. Linux never captured the desktop because they don't arbitrarily limit security features to people who pay more?
- zamadatix 8y agoIt is basically a virtual machine but note from the article: - "One of the key enhancements we have made for Windows Sandbox is the ability to use a copy of the Windows 10 installed on your computer, instead of downloading a new VHD image as you would have to do with an ordinary virtual machine." - "we also allow Windows sandbox to use the same physical memory pages as the host for operating system binaries via a technology we refer to as “direct map”" - "More recently, Microsoft has worked with our graphics ecosystem partners to integrate modern graphics virtualization capabilities directly into DirectX and WDDM, the driver model used by display drivers on Windows." (Note: it also works with OpenGL nowadays too) Maybe you can achieve your workflow needs from Home + free 3rd party virtualization software but if you don't see anything special I'd recommend reading the article more carefully.
- LordViper128 8y agoMy perception with stuff like this has always been. Microsoft testing it out in the environment it's going to be used, and with expert supervision. Then after a couple of versions, normal users can get a solid version. I have seen this happen with Visual Studio and resounding tools.
- quest88 8y agoMore abstractly: A company adds a new feature to help sell a product.
- mosselman 8y agoThe same goes for full disk encryption, it isn’t included in the cheapest edition I installed on an old laptop for my mother. Now booting with veracrypt takes 2 minutes. Needless to say I had to get her a chromebook: new laptop, easy to use, secure and for the price of one windows license. This is what will get Microsoft in the end.
- ForHackernews 8y agoSecure and inexpensive as long as you don't mind paying with your privacy. I'm worried that this is going to be the compromise we're all forced to make in the future.
- snr 8y agoUmm, that's how economics work?
- ForHackernews 8y agoPrivacy should not be a luxury good.
- mcintyre1994 8y agoThat's already the Android/iOS tradeoff, and that's assuming Android is considered secure now which it wasn't last time I was using it.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoSeems like the privacy situation isn't much better in Windows 10 tbh. At least Microsoft aren't an advertising company (for now) I suppose.
- zozbot123 8y ago> Secure and inexpensive as long as you don't mind paying with your privacy. There are obvious alternatives to ChromeOS that are just as secure and just as inexpensive (especially if you have some old hardware just laying around, or else you can just buy refurbished hardware - just about anything made in the last 10 years will do, if not more than that) - and not any less useful than a Chromebook. And they can be updated for as long as the hardware keeps going - they won't suddenly become "unsupported" after a mere five years.
- meritt 8y agoWhile your statement is reasonable, it's interesting seeing a Mac user complain about things being too expensive. Is it fundamentally worse to overcharge for software over the hardware?
- zaksoup 8y agoIt seems to me that no matter what happens two classes of users are going to be created: those that can pay for security and those that cannot. Ultimately Apple's pricing means all their users are first class - hence security as a bread-and-butter feature on their platforms. In MSFT's case they're going to have low and high cost consumers, so they segment those users into the two relevant classes. None of this is good, for anybody involved. IT security is like vaccines, it only works if everybody's got them. This one of my biggest issues with the current "ads let us have free software" defense of the advertising craze. Ads let us segregate users based on what features they can afford not to have, and unfortunately for most laypeople it's security and privacy that's on the chopping block. What a mess. Typed from my iPad Pro.
- eertami 8y ago> Ultimately Apple's pricing means all their users are first class - hence security Yeah... Good luck running the latest version of iOS on an older iPhone. (Many are still have a 5/6 and you really don't want to update those if you value a reasonable experience and latency.)
- geocar 8y agoI have a couple Android devices and I can't get them to update at all. I'm sure there's some kind of solution, but my time is really valuable to me: If all I have to do is spend £1k every four years (£20 a month) to not worry about this, it's a done deal.
- gruturo 8y agoYou do realize you're attacking the _one_ company which supports their phone for the longest period, do you? IOS 12 can be installed on the 5S, which is the oldest 64 bit phone. It was launched in 2013.
- oblio 8y agoThe Pro edition isn't the most expensive one...
- alkonaut 8y ago> come up with a new security feature and While they sell this as something that protects against downloaded malware, I think this is going to be used a lot in software testing. We have lots of manual tests of desktop software that neads clean environments which is painful when e.g. comparing several versions side by side etc. This is great compared to running multiple full VM's side by side.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- lkdjjdjjjdskjd 8y agoDisk encryption is also only available with Pro upwards. It's not helping against the notion that Windows is insecure to use...
- samfisher83 8y agoYou can get a pro key for 10 bucks.
- xoss 8y ago> "Only Microsoft would come up with a new security feature and then intentionally and arbitrarily limit its availability to the most expensive version of their OS." What's your point? How is that not a reasonable business model?
- neotek 8y agoCharge more for enterprise features by all means, but if basic security concepts are something you feel the need to charge for, your priorities are fucked up.
- krige 8y agoIt's hardly basic. It might seem so for you or - in general - people who frequent hn, but you'd have to spend a lot of time explaining why it's good to an average person running windows home.
- JadeNB 8y agoThere are a lot of basic, in the sense of foundational, things that are not basic, in the sense of easy to understand. I think "basic security feature" was meant in the former sense.
- kypro 8y agoThey'd probably have to raise the price of their cheaper versions if they didn't do this. Seems like a good compromise for the consumer to me. Offset the cost of all of the fancy tech most people won't want or use to those willing to pay more and potentially use it.
- regularfry 8y agoWhy?
- Godel_unicode 8y agoWho are these users who want/could make effective use of sandbox, but need none of the other features of pro, exactly?
- regularfry 8y agoWhat an odd response.
- neotek 8y agoNot having to risk your machine being compromised every time you run a third party executable is not fancy tech.
- Godel_unicode 8y agoTry explaining how and when(!) to use this to your HR department, then tell me it's not fancy tech. "My spreadsheet won't open" 'don't use sandbox for that' "But you said every file I downloaded" 'no, only exe' "I opened the PDF exe, edited it, now it's gone" 'self-extracting zips from our payroll system are fine'
- eastendguy 8y agoSo right... this is clearly a "PRO" feature. For normal users the by far better solution is still: Do not install any EXE from unknown sources. Or even better: Do not install anything new in the first place.
- OpenBSD-supreme 8y agoThis, plus RDSH role, is why I run Windows Server 2019 Datacenter as my daily driver Windows system, with a background VirtualBox VM with a host only network connections hosting vlmcsd. As for why RDSH, there is no reason why Windows 10 client can't host multiple WinStations/sessions simultaneously, other than Microsoft wanting to milk users for big money with Windows Server. UNIX allows this multi-session behavior with SSH and various [even nested] X servers!