Microsoft 'Confirms' Windows 7 New Monthly Charge

[NorthSky]

• https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordon...thly-charge-windows-10-free-upgrade-cost/amp/

Oops!

 

[hvbias]

Microsoft gave people on W7 a very long time to upgrade to W10 for free. It's not cheap to have programmers continuously writing patches/vulnerability fixes for an old OS, especially since wages have gone up dramatically and OS license costs have seen very little price increase since the Windows XP days.

I remember buying an OEM license for Windows XP for $150. Windows 10 64 bit Pro at Newegg is $144!

 

[maverickronin]

That's nothing new. They offered paid patches for XP as well.

Also it's downright insane that they charge you for a license and then fill it with ads like free phone app.

 

[garbulky]

Windows 10 as a service that you pay $139 to install. Sigh... Honestly MS needs to be wary. Right now a lot of my friends don't have desktop computers. They mainly tool around on phones. A good amount of them don't even have wifi at their house - they just use their cell data. Those that do have computers don't choose desktops but laptops and it's usually for things like school or something. Also most of their computers are aging and old.
Just last week I talked to a gentleman who was talking about trying to figure out something for a chess program that was run on a 3.5 inch floppy. When I informed him that they don't even use floppy's anymore, he was surprised and he said oh I'm sure it will come back like a renaissance. And then I told him the size comparison - a floppy is about a 1.5 mb and the cheapest thumb drive I could find ($4) held 2000 MB.

The point is a lot of people still use a computer simply to type stuff out and surf the internet. Other than for HD video even computers from the early 2000's can do this quite well. It's going to be hard for MS to sell a "maintenance" package for people that are happily tooling around on old machines. Most of them don't even know what the heck an update is. If their machines aren't set for automatic updates, it's never happened.

What that means is that when this new charge comes, it's going to get a big "huh" from users. Then when things start to mess up on their machine, MS is going to get a bad reputation. That is- if they know MS and their Dell are two different things. Half the people who use windows I talk to don't even know what windows is. So their pc manufacturer is going to get a bad reputation!

 

[amirm]

Looks like the charge is a service fee for corporate customers. In many cases, such as appliances that have Windows in them, it is cheaper to pay that fee that to re-design the equipment/system to use Window 10. So it is a good option to charge them to maintain it in the future than saying get lost.

 

[Wombat]

It is interesting that 40% of MS OS users have stayed with Win 7. Add those who got Win 10 by default on new computers because Win 7 wasn't an option and those who were brow-beaten into taking the free Win 10 upgrade. It seems that consumers weren't enthused about the 'upgrade' to Win 10.

How many of us have perfectly good electronic devices that are rendered useless by lack of driver support for subsequent MS OS releases?

 

[NorthSky]

Well, the choice is offered, which is better than no choice.

 

[Wombat]

Well, the choice is offered, which is better than no choice.

I am not a corporate entity. There is no choice for me other than planned redundancy pushing me to Win10. No, Apple and Linux are not practical options.

 

[NorthSky]

That article finished like this:

"... Microsoft is currently only making this offer to Windows 7 Professional customers in Volume Licensing. Some small businesses may qualify, but the vast majority of everyday consumers (most of whom are running Windows 7 Home) will not.

Obviously, Microsoft’s stance may change but, until it does, Windows 7 consumers will have to upgrade to Windows 10 or Windows 8 (support lasts until January 10th, 2023). Staying put will be unthinkable as every new vulnerability will be unpatched, leaving security holes big enough for hackers to drive a bus through.

If you do now want to upgrade, you’ll run into two pain points: Windows 8 is no longer officially for sale and Windows 10 is no longer a free upgrade, with prices for the latter starting at $139 for an online download.

Consequently, while Windows 7 users have long been able to laugh at the ongoing problems of Windows 10 users, it now appears it will be those users who upgraded for free who will get the last laugh…"

 

[restorer-john]

Seriously, this is to be expected based on what happened with XP. Embedded systems in hardware are still supported I believe running XP.

The extended support is good and optional for big volume licensed operators.

I have no problem with what MS is doing, but the push to Win10 was poorly handled and the OS was nowhere near ready for prime time- it still isn't. It's still a mish-mash of styles and has become very illogical as they bury more and more of the guts and make it harder for people to customise their machines. It's a pity you have to install GPE into Win10 home machines to get any semblance of control. Regedit gets very boring trying to search for and fix things that have been overlooked or plain locked-down.

Win7 was a polished product. It still is. I use it on perhaps 20 machines and Win10 on about 3 in this house. Our business runs Win10 because it makes my life easy- less overall issues with people who don't know what they are doing.

My main PC is running 10 but the auxiliary machine on my bench runs 7 and it's a joy to use. My HTPCs run 7 because it's simply faster and has WMC (IMO, the most visually polished piece of software MS ever released). At one point it was running 2 DVT twin channel USB tuners and time shift recorded anything on multiple channels at once. Try that on Win10.

I have three Dell Zino 410HD boxes that have internal blu-ray/DVDR, HDMI etc for TV use- all running Win7- I wouldn't change that for the world. And I think I have about 15 spare win7 licenses.

The 40% share might drop to 25% but it will be a very hard OS to kill- it's that good.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I've not understood the love of 7 over 8.1 (yes 8.0 was rather regrettable). I do get the overall finished and coherent nature of 7 vs 8.1 as an OS. But 8.1 one eventually became pretty good, and it has a much lighter hardware resource footprint than 7. Win 10 on the other hand is something I only grudgingly use.

 

[Thomas savage]

Looks like the charge is a service fee for corporate customers. In many cases, such as appliances that have Windows in them, it is cheaper to pay that fee that to re-design the equipment/system to use Window 10. So it is a good option to charge them to maintain it in the future than saying get lost.

The NHS is still on Windows 95 I think lol

 

[restorer-john]

8.1 one eventually became pretty good, and it has a much lighter hardware resource footprint than 7.

It may have a technically lighter resource footprint, but it came at the expense of pulling out all those gorgeous visuals and 3D 'feel' of 7.

We went from the beautiful aero-flip (alt+tab) back to hideous flat side by side boxes with nasty edges. Remember this?

They gave us multiple desktops- whoopee. I had way better than that 10+ years ago on Gnome and 3D desktops switching that even runs on an ancient Acer EEPC still now.

I guess I'm just disappointed with the direction MS went after Win7. It was copying instead of setting the standard as they had done in the past. Turning their backs on the very people (the business customers) who pay their bills to appease the iPhone crowd with all its stupid virtual 'switches' on every screen. It's Fisher Price computing IMO.

 

[restorer-john]

The NHS is still on Windows 95 I think lol

I have a 3rd machine at my bench dedicated to my AudioLab hardware running Windows 95. It boots up faster to a usable desktop than anything else in the house.

They all run into the one 24" monitor using the 3 VGA/HDMI/DVI inputs!

 

[Blumlein 88]

It may have a technically lighter resource footprint, but it came at the expense of pulling out all those gorgeous visuals and 3D 'feel' of 7.

We went from the beautiful aero-flip (alt+tab) back to hideous flat side by side boxes with nasty edges. Remember this?

View attachment 15518

They gave us multiple desktops- whoopee. I had way better than that 10+ years ago on Gnome and 3D desktops switching that even runs on an ancient Acer EEPC still now.

I guess I'm just disappointed with the direction MS went after Win7. It was copying instead of setting the standard as they had done in the past. Turning their backs on the very people (the business customers) who pay their bills to appease the iPhone crowd with all its stupid virtual 'switches' on every screen. It's Fisher Price computing IMO.

Yes, I remember such things. I also agree about the stupid flat fad. I've used mostly Linux of one form or another for about 15 years now on my main desktop machines. Make it flat, and hide useful menus, and what menu 'symbols' you have are cryptic. Bah!!

I finally became so fed up with MS I purchased an overpriced second hand Mac for the ability to handle things you can't in Linux. It was preferable to the tar baby windows has become. Things like some printers, scanners, and recording interfaces.

 

[restorer-john]

It was preferable to the tar baby windows has become.

So funny and so true.

 

[NorthSky]

It may have a technically lighter resource footprint, but it came at the expense of pulling out all those gorgeous visuals and 3D 'feel' of 7.

We went from the beautiful aero-flip (alt+tab) back to hideous flat side by side boxes with nasty edges. Remember this?

View attachment 15518

They gave us multiple desktops- whoopee. I had way better than that 10+ years ago on Gnome and 3D desktops switching that even runs on an ancient Acer EEPC still now.

I guess I'm just disappointed with the direction MS went after Win7. It was copying instead of setting the standard as they had done in the past. Turning their backs on the very people (the business customers) who pay their bills to appease the iPhone crowd with all its stupid virtual 'switches' on every screen. It's Fisher Price computing IMO.

That's pretty cool that screen. Windows 10 has a 3D feature, can you do the same as the above? I never had 7, from XP I went to 8.1 and now 10. Everyday single day I live on the precipice of MS and Apple, CNN and FOX, Google and Edge, Twitter and Instagram, Amazon and Alibaba, Cortana and Alexa, 3D and 4K, hurricanes and volcanoes.

There is a guy down below, with one computer having W7 and his laptop with W10.
There is a guy above, with Mac. I live in the middle, using the same electric power line.

* On PBS and Netflix there is a documentary; The Vietnam War...10 episodes, roughly eighteen hours total, with all the greatest music tunes/songs we grew up with. Must See.

 

[KSTR]

How many of us have perfectly good electronic devices that are rendered useless by lack of driver support for subsequent MS OS releases?

Damn right! I have a nice EPSON laserprinter, a bunch of PCI soundcards and a lot more I can't use on anything newer than XP. The bigger problem is software, a lot of older engineering SW is old 16bit Windows or even DOS and won't run.
Personally I find Win2000 and XP the best Windows versions, from there most things went downhill and less and less user friendly. For example like to customize the appearance and those features pretty much completely went away with Win7 (try to set up a light grey window background for programs like Excel or Word), gotta use 3rd party tools to set font sizes and all that shit. A "search tool" that doesn't work at all, must use 3rd party SW for a usable search. With Win10 in its standard setup you can't even recognize which window has currently the focus because the top bars don't switch colors, and the keyboard support is getting worse and worse because those stupid new breed of programmers (both OS and app programmers) think everthing on a computer has to be done and only done with a mouse and nobody would ever user a keyboard to manage the most elementary things like scrolling. I better stop now before my blood starts cooking again and I enter full rant mode...

 

[hvbias]

(though in this case literally yelling at the cloud with OneDrive integration )

All the complaints in this thread absolutely apply to Apple/OS X as well. Or Android or iOS on phones.

Time marches on, I don't think it is unusual at all that software/hardware gets dropped.

A lot of you guys are viewing this through rose tinted glasses (hence the image above) I would never, ever want to go back to Win 2000 or XP. The number of random BSODs and trying to figure it out was a nightmare (sorry I consider my time too valuable for that!). Or having to basically reformat Windows when bigger pieces of hardware are changed, when I can now just use the Windows utility combined with Nvidia software to do it for me. And I haven't seen a BSOD since W7 on any computer I've built/bought.

 

[Soniclife]

I use on a daily basis XP, 8.1 & 10 plus a load of different server versions, I find 8 rage inducing, it makes me want to hurt people, the others are fine. I don't have a choice about using 8, I'm not happy about it.