4 ms·

Windows is not selling upgrades anymore, 8 to 10 was a free upgrade

usrusr 5y ago
8 too? I was going to write something about this, particularly in how that's the reason why I don't really disagree with GP despite pondering the exact opposite "what if". But the sudden appearance of an 11 that nobody asked for gives me the impression that the culture that was fostered on the paid upgrade is still very much alive. Meanwhile my mind has taken a deeper dive into the rabbit hole fantasy of competing Windows distribution divisions. I'd expect it to seem like a total failure : the surface. E.g. with Steam users refusing to get lured into the "gamer Windows" (something with an X in the name), the "crippled version that is entirely ad-funded" (10, basically) drawing too much hate for the entire brand while still not being crippled enough to push people to paid options and the one you can get with the Office subscription being a little too incompatible for employee lockout reasons with the plethora of in-house essentials required to run at customers. But Microsoft could still come out stronger, having a well defined place for bad ideas to go to die. And who knows, one of the niche distributions might be essentially sysinternals with a kernel and a package manager.
vetinari 5y ago
Only for end-users with OEM licences, and only limited amount (10 licenses max? Or so). For corporate and government, it was not free. And these are where the money is.
- usrusr 5y ago
  But aren't those usually on a subscription anyways? Could still be a factor, in theory: they might pull an Oracle pushing all their subscribers onto 11 unless they upgrade to the golden account tier that still receives updates. They actually did this, I think, with 7, but I assume not at a scale that could bring the pattern anywhere close to being a central motivation.
  - vetinari 5y ago
    They are mostly on subscription; but what is the rationale for subscription? The right to upgrade, and the ability to have all machines running the same version. Remember, that in order for subscription license to be valid, it is usable only for machine that came with OEM license in the first place. I once worked for a corp that didn't have subscription. The rationale was, that is was not important who was running which version at their computer, and the subscription was thus a cost on top of OEM license that didn't bring any value. Since the computers were refreshed every 4-5 years anyway, they always had a supported Windows version.

8 too? I was going to write something about this, particularly in how that's the reason why I don't really disagree with GP despite pondering the exact opposite "what if". But the sudden appearance of an 11 that nobody asked for gives me the impression that the culture that was fostered on the paid upgrade is still very much alive. Meanwhile my mind has taken a deeper dive into the rabbit hole fantasy of competing Windows distribution divisions. I'd expect it to seem like a total failure : the surface. E.g. with Steam users refusing to get lured into the "gamer Windows" (something with an X in the name), the "crippled version that is entirely ad-funded" (10, basically) drawing too much hate for the entire brand while still not being crippled enough to push people to paid options and the one you can get with the Office subscription being a little too incompatible for employee lockout reasons with the plethora of in-house essentials required to run at customers. But Microsoft could still come out stronger, having a well defined place for bad ideas to go to die. And who knows, one of the niche distributions might be essentially sysinternals with a kernel and a package manager.

vetinari 5y ago

Only for end-users with OEM licences, and only limited amount (10 licenses max? Or so). For corporate and government, it was not free. And these are where the money is.

usrusr 5y ago
But aren't those usually on a subscription anyways? Could still be a factor, in theory: they might pull an Oracle pushing all their subscribers onto 11 unless they upgrade to the golden account tier that still receives updates. They actually did this, I think, with 7, but I assume not at a scale that could bring the pattern anywhere close to being a central motivation.
- vetinari 5y ago
  They are mostly on subscription; but what is the rationale for subscription? The right to upgrade, and the ability to have all machines running the same version. Remember, that in order for subscription license to be valid, it is usable only for machine that came with OEM license in the first place. I once worked for a corp that didn't have subscription. The rationale was, that is was not important who was running which version at their computer, and the subscription was thus a cost on top of OEM license that didn't bring any value. Since the computers were refreshed every 4-5 years anyway, they always had a supported Windows version.