4 ms·

>Getting you an MS account is one small step away from charging you monthly for the privilege of using the computer that you've already paid for. That's alread

by drbawb 5y ago

>Getting you an MS account is one small step away from charging you monthly for the privilege of using the computer that you've already paid for. That's already a thing - unfortunately - the only way to get Windows 10/11 Enterprise is via a subscription, though they're careful not to word it as such. There are three ways to get it: (1) you can either buy it through the volume license channel which requires an active software assurance agreement to continue legally using the latest build [though you can legally reinstall the LTSC branch for as long as that's supported]; (2) you can also get a subscription for Windows E3/E5 for ~$84/yr from M365. Which, if you price out the volume license with SA it works out to about the same yearly cost as M365, funny how that works. (3) Finally if you're an MSDN subscriber you get some number of non-prod keys for Windows Enterprise. So I agree with you 100%, the writing is on the wall, Windows will absolutely become a subscription service in the next few years. (Thankfully I've been distancing myself from Windows in anticipation of this event. As soon as it was described as "Windows as a Service" in marketing material I immediately installed Linux on my main workstation, and stuffed Windows inside a VM w/ PCIe passthrough for the GPU.) My guess is they'll bundle Home into M365 family, Pro will remain available to consumers in the OEM channel, but will primarily be meant an upgrade available for M365 business subscribers, and Enterprise will remain mostly unchanged as the volume license option.

judge2020 5y ago
> Windows will absolutely become a subscription service in the next few years. It already is, but the price is viewing ads and enduring "whoops, you're now using Microsoft Edge". They're just not yet ready to give up the many millions a year they get from system integrators buying Windows.
- fuzzfactor 5y ago
  What happens when your account is overdrawn? Well when the commitment was made for Windows 10 to be the final version of Windows I guess they were right in costly ways that weren't anticipated. Windows 11 is turning out to be less & less of the kind of Windows people once knew & loved. Power users may feel like it's completely hostile but it's overall just less to love for everyone. Failing to live up to the Windows 10 commitment before it had a chance to decently stabilize, with all those resources, is a major failure but without the continued follow-through now you've got to figure there's going to be a different force at work if Windows is to be all it could be or even kept relevant in some ways. And if the force starts to depend on direct licensing fees from everyone for it's survival, which haven't been in place for a while that's just screwing the pooch that much more. With Windows 10 & 11 so far you need to be really sharp with the numbers to keep from getting the feeling that users are costing Microsoft money somehow. If that happens inherent pressure may arise naturally to reduce the number of users in response and the overall actions of the company could become unstoppable in this direction. Once underway, overall corporate momentum could tend downward uncontrollably with very little chance of a turn-around for an entire bureaucracy. Even worse a small part of the bureaucracy could be getting new income that was not there and they could be rewarded for devising the system, this will push a further group of users away since anyone who doesn't like going from tolerable to intolerable will be in the same group. There is some appearance of the Bureaucratic Failure Mode.

by drbawb 5y ago

judge2020 5y ago

> Windows will absolutely become a subscription service in the next few years. It already is, but the price is viewing ads and enduring "whoops, you're now using Microsoft Edge". They're just not yet ready to give up the many millions a year they get from system integrators buying Windows.

fuzzfactor 5y ago
What happens when your account is overdrawn? Well when the commitment was made for Windows 10 to be the final version of Windows I guess they were right in costly ways that weren't anticipated. Windows 11 is turning out to be less & less of the kind of Windows people once knew & loved. Power users may feel like it's completely hostile but it's overall just less to love for everyone. Failing to live up to the Windows 10 commitment before it had a chance to decently stabilize, with all those resources, is a major failure but without the continued follow-through now you've got to figure there's going to be a different force at work if Windows is to be all it could be or even kept relevant in some ways. And if the force starts to depend on direct licensing fees from everyone for it's survival, which haven't been in place for a while that's just screwing the pooch that much more. With Windows 10 & 11 so far you need to be really sharp with the numbers to keep from getting the feeling that users are costing Microsoft money somehow. If that happens inherent pressure may arise naturally to reduce the number of users in response and the overall actions of the company could become unstoppable in this direction. Once underway, overall corporate momentum could tend downward uncontrollably with very little chance of a turn-around for an entire bureaucracy. Even worse a small part of the bureaucracy could be getting new income that was not there and they could be rewarded for devising the system, this will push a further group of users away since anyone who doesn't like going from tolerable to intolerable will be in the same group. There is some appearance of the Bureaucratic Failure Mode.