they did drop quite a bomb few days ago.
Interesting. I somehow missed this. I'm not sure how I feel about this.I happen to have probably half a dozen legitimate windows licenses of varying versions, so I suppose the free upgrade is...nice. But I've routinely found that it's better to
not upgrade windows, because new versions are generally terrible at first. Horrendous resource hogs, compatibility issues...it's just easier to run older versions most of the time. But sure, grab one machine, try out windows 10...talk to Cortana, why not? I can always wipe and install something else instead.
I am however, suspicious. What are they thinking? Presumably there are still ways they can make money besides selling operating systems. Office software, server tools, SQL, exchange, visual studio, they've made a few games etc. And they sell some hardware. Xbox, kinect, soon hololens. Probably they own and sell a bunch of other stuff I don't even know about.
But historically, I'd thought the majority of microsoft's revenue came from OEM sales. They've had a monopoly on operating systems, and an awful lot of manufacturers have contracts requiring that they include a licensed copy of windows with every machine they sell. Would this mean giving up that revenue stream, or are they keeping those contracts and charging OEMs, and most users just don't have to worry about it? That's possible. And not very ominous. It might not even change very much. People who build their own machines and actually buy a license probably aren't a big source of revenue anyway. They'd only be giving that up.
But again, I'm suspicious. Thinking of windows in the context of "free to play" games...are they going to be nickel and diming for individual services?OS is free, but if you want drivers for your hardware, that's extra. Want the latest security patch? That's extra too. Depending on how nasty they want to be...this could be terrible.
But again...it doesn't need to be entirely ominous. Controlling the operating system has benefits for them. It gives them control of other markets. They can release
other software and make it exclusive to windows. Having windows be free means a lot of people will be running it, and more likely to buy software for windows. But they already control the market. If this was their motivation, what would prompt them to feel it was a good move?
So, suspicious. Not hugely concerned. Worst case if I don't like it, there's Linux. And Android is reasonably likely to become viable as a PC OS in the next few years. In fact, it's possible that microsoft is doing this preemptively to cut off google before that happens. Linux has not been a huge threat to them, but if
google decided to push Android as a PC operating system, that could be devastating to them years down the road.
Short term, biggest change for me is that it means one of my computers will have Cortana. I'm ok with that.