4 ms·

I don't think this free upgrade is much of a shock. People who bought a Windows XP machine in 2001 enjoyed 6+ years of free OS upgrades from Microsoft. Likewi

I don't think this free upgrade is much of a shock. People who bought a Windows XP machine in 2001 enjoyed 6+ years of free OS upgrades from Microsoft. Likewise, people who buy a Mac enjoy 5+ years of free OS upgrades from Apple. If Microsoft wants to shift into a yearly release cycle and they don't give away the updates to their existing customers then they're essentially charging for service packs, which won't fly.

talmand 12y ago
It's not a shock but it's outside the norm for Microsoft. Typically you do not get free upgrades from one version of Windows to the next. You can free updates to your current version. But never a free upgrade to the next major version. WinXP users enjoyed six plus years of free updates to WinXP. I don't see this type of release from Microsoft changing their update/upgrade model. They're just doing it as a means to push the user base harder to transition and possibly as a small admittance of the screw-up over Win8. Apple, on the other hand, went from cheap upgrades to free upgrades over the last few versions of OS X. It's not the same thing as Microsoft's release pattern.
- jeeva 12y ago
  Let's be a little honest, though - this is a spectacular rebrand for 8.2, along with large user-visible changes (not forcing Metro) and some cool backend stuff. A lot of this stuff was originally going to be in the second service pack for 8.1, if I remember correctly (most distinctively, the start menu returning). They've said themselves that they needed to get away from the stigma that is associated with 8.* - and that's great. Charging for it would be a bit harsh.
  - talmand 12y ago
    Well, sure, it's like what happened with going from Vista to Win7. But since they are mostly a software company I don't have much issue with them having a business model that makes them money, and that involves charging for software.

talmand 12y ago

It's not a shock but it's outside the norm for Microsoft. Typically you do not get free upgrades from one version of Windows to the next. You can free updates to your current version. But never a free upgrade to the next major version. WinXP users enjoyed six plus years of free updates to WinXP. I don't see this type of release from Microsoft changing their update/upgrade model. They're just doing it as a means to push the user base harder to transition and possibly as a small admittance of the screw-up over Win8. Apple, on the other hand, went from cheap upgrades to free upgrades over the last few versions of OS X. It's not the same thing as Microsoft's release pattern.

jeeva 12y ago
Let's be a little honest, though - this is a spectacular rebrand for 8.2, along with large user-visible changes (not forcing Metro) and some cool backend stuff. A lot of this stuff was originally going to be in the second service pack for 8.1, if I remember correctly (most distinctively, the start menu returning). They've said themselves that they needed to get away from the stigma that is associated with 8.* - and that's great. Charging for it would be a bit harsh.
- talmand 12y ago
  Well, sure, it's like what happened with going from Vista to Win7. But since they are mostly a software company I don't have much issue with them having a business model that makes them money, and that involves charging for software.