Posted on 07/14/2016 12:34:33 PM PDT by upchuck
For months Microsoft has been describing Windows 10 “as a service” and now we know why. Microsoft is going to introduce a monthly subscription fee for Windows 10 usage…
That cost will be $7 per user per month but the good news is it only applies to enterprises, for now. The new pricing tier will be called “Windows 10 Enterprise E3” and it means Windows has finally joined Office 365 and Azure as a subscription service.
Of course the big question is now: How does this new subscription pricing affect the millions of consumers who upgraded to Windows 10 on the promise of it being free?
The good news is Microsoft has gone on record to say it is not being passed down to consumers at this stage: “This new subscription model is not associated with our current upgrade offering or applicable to the Windows 10 consumer edition,” a Microsoft spokesperson told PC World.
Could Microsoft eventually introduce Windows 10 monthly subscriptions for consumers? Without doubt, but I would be highly sceptical they would apply to anyone who has already upgraded. That said there is likely to be a threshold in future where Microsoft will draw a line in the sand for the ongoing addition of new features without a fee.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Gates & Co. has Jumped the shark......................
Generally speaking, you can run a Windows environment (xp, vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10) in a virtual machine running under Linux. If Photoshop and Vegas Pro will run with Windows then they should run in a VM under Linux.
Do some research. Ask questions on the Linux forums.
Chow for paragraph eater.
I have a Linux (Ubuntu) VM running Windows 7 with .net installed to run the Atmel development environment including the Dragon emulator for the Atmel parts. It works pretty well, modulo the USB periodically dropping the emulator. I'm not seeing any performance issues; Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU E6850 @ 3.00GHz × 2, 3.9 GiB Memory.
It’s not quite that simple — one of the reasons that they can make money on the enterprise-/professional market is precisely because of the interoperability provided by having such a large share of personal computers (especially because the personal computer OS can be used in small- and mid-sized businesses).
By making it a subscription service, they are signalling several things: (1) that it is possible that they might do this same OS-as-a-service to the personal computer, (2) that they want to be more involved in the business*, and (3) that the OS isn’t yours, but rather that you need their continual permission to use it [as opposed to simply buying the disk/license once].
> A lot of folks only change operating systems when they get a new computer. Since MS isn’t making much from the manufacturers initial install, any model is likely to produce a greater income stream than the historic one did.
Again, there’s a LOT of market-share that they have simply because they are the default install. — Besides, there’s a lot better things they could have done than Win 8 / Win 10. (I talk with programmers, and one really interesting development is that formal methods proof-tools are starting to enter the mainstream industry [as opposed to high-integrity software], these tools make it possible to prove things like the absence of run-time errors, the absence of remote-code execution, the absence of data-flow errors [remote execution is a subset of this], and allows a LOT of new/interesting optimizations.)
* — The subscription model effectively negates such practices as non-connected computer (needed for some security set-ups), and certain “known behavior” set-ups (where any software update is rejected because it might lead to different results; think processing readings from lab-equipment for a years long experiment, you DON’T want the data to be impacted because you upgraded the system).
Rather than accepting the Microsoft “upgrade offer” to 10, I installed Ubuntu last year on half of my hard drive for a dual boot system and am very pleased with the result. Ubuntu is much faster (on the same machine) and it works flawlessly. There is plenty of excellent free software and, from within Ubuntu, I can see and open all of my Windows files on the other side of the drive partition.
Run lots of serious software tools for engineering. Things like 3D parametric CAD, schematic capture and PCB layout, etc. Not to mention being the de-facto standard platform for professional documentation (spreadsheets, presentations, word processing docs).
This is actually a pretty good move for Microsoft. Doing it this way, for businesses (not consumers) will simplify IT and deployments of updates. Much like Office365 subscriptions have taken over the corporate world (including running Outlook on Azure servers), doing the same with the OS will make it a lot easier for the IT guys to ensure seamless deployments, consistency of platform, and management.
Microsoft gets the business/enterprise world like no one else. Probably why even their least popular OS (Windows 8), at just 2.43% market share, still eclipses all variants of Linux combined. And why Windows 8.1 deployments alone (not even XP, 10, or 7) blows away OSX and Linux combined, in terms of market share.
the fool suits at MS have ALWAYS wanted OS as a service.
what is the point of cutting the cable if the OS is the defacto cable box.
If they price it really reasonably for the home edition (like at most $3.95/month), I think people will accept it.
However, don’t expect Open Source software to support all the features of the latest hardware. That’s always been a big downside of many desktop distributions of Linux.
Thank you for the info.
Photoshop and Vegas are processor intensive and do not run well in virtual environments. It can be done, but is very slow and frustrating and I am not sure what the point would be.
For now, meaning this week? This month? Today?
“What hardware are you talking about? Literally NOTHING I have bought in the last 10 years has any trouble with Linux, Windoz, on the other hand, has tops of problems. “
Like what?
I guarantee you that the average Linux user at best has a mouse, a router, a printer and maybe an external HD.
I use two laser printers, a networked USB hub, scanner, Several external TB HDs, a Wacom digital drawing pad as well as a lepap motion controller, a Kinect sensor, not to mention several Android devices connect via Bluetooth, and a Nook that all are attached at some point.
None have had a driver issue. I even just bought one of those wireless air mice, and all I had to do was attach the dongle, press connect, and it worked without having to configure one thing.
I would dream of 1/5th of those things being used on some Linux distro.
I remember trying to use Samba to just network two LinSUCKS (see I can make up names too) PCs together a few years ago, and that was a frigging nightmare.
“Wrong drivers, not reognized by the OS, needs special software not native to the OS.,etc, etc.”
Wrong drivers?
So basically you either dont know what you are doing, or you bought crap. Because any hardware manufacturer design around being used with Windows or Macs. If their crap didnt work with Windows, it means they didn’t bother to test it before it left the factory.
“needs special software not native to the OS”?
Oh....because THAT’s new. Try installing some special hardware on some Ubuntu box and see if you dont need that too!
That’s why despite all of the crowing Linux fanatics, it is still used less than Macs and barely more than Chromebooks.
Linux is thrilled with the news.
windows emulator on Linux. It is called WINE.
Most Linux distributions are fine and work on many laptops and desktops. If I could get most of the features to work on the inexpensive Nextbook 10 with Windows 10 2 in 1 laptop/tablet that I purchased a couple months ago I would definitely use it on that. I purchased it for doing email, internet browsing and writing documents on the road. Unfortunately, no one has been able to figure out how to get a Linux version to work on this machine. This is because despite the claims to the contrary there are frequently driver and other issues when trying to install Linux on a newer machine. Fortunately, it will most likely be eventually straightened out for my little 2 in 1 laptop/tablet.
Win 10 downloaded seamlessly for me replacing Win 7.
I even complimented them on FR.
Then on July 1 it auto-downloaded an update which locked up my (undocumented) copy of Office 2010. OK that’s reasonable.
But it wouldn’t let me delete Office 2010 or install my legal copy of Office 2007. I had to do a format and reinstall.
I think it’s time for OpenOffice.
Hi guy, I hope you are doing well.
MS says to upgrade to 10 free of charge, then charges you for using it?
Not only that, but won’t support other versions of Windows that you purchased?
Bait and switch if you ask me.
5.56mm
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