The operating system of a computer used to be the first major piece of software you bought with a computer, followed by whatever major applications you wanted to run to actually do something other than adjust your desktop background.
In that environment, Microsoft was extraordinarily successful at selling the Windows OS because so many mission critical or popular applications ran only on Windows. That stopped being the case years ago with the rise of the web browser as the cross-platform application delivery system.
Which operating system one uses has become largely a "who cares?" issue -- it's nearly immaterial which operating system you use, as long as it has a browser.
Hence, Microsoft is at last noticing that Windows has become, not irrelevant, but at least unnecessary, for the majority of computer users. They hardly notice whether they're running on Windows, Mac OS-X, Linux, or some mobile platform -- all they notice is "Can I get to Facebook, eBay, and do my online banking?"
It's a whole new day for Windows, as it becomes free.
tech ping?
Goes right in with no wait. Uses a blue tooth keyboard and has access to tons of apps of which most are free.
Had to buy a second one because my son keeps taking mine over even the Ipad.
I say all this because I grew up with Dbase 2, 5.25 floppy disks without hard drives and all forms of Windows.
Unless Microsoft competes and gets better it is over IMO.
>>It’s a whole new day for Windows, as it becomes free.
Yeah. Riiiiiiight.
Windows with Bing will be free. Just watch a few ads or be locked out of other browsers. Then, the sidebars start getting filled up with ads. Eventually, your computer slows to a crawl to load all the advertising.
Then, they offer an “upgrade” to get rid of all that and it only costs the same as regular Win 8.1.
I’ll stick with 7.
Not even if they paid me to use it.
I recently upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7. Don’t see any reason I would want to upgrade to a feature limited Windows 8. My wife might be a candidate. All she uses her computer for is browsing the Internet.
This would be sort of like getting free Obamacare, bundled with free cancer.
Ooops, don’t want to give away my genius ideas for free.
LOL. I find this totally amusing. Microsoft now wants to have a “free to play” operating system, a la mobile device apps. They will make the user pay per hour, or buy “credits” to use the software unless the user wants to “upgrade” to the “unlocked” version.
Microsoft always looks towards Apple for ideas, then completely screws it up.
They should get out of the software business and concentrate on their silly acquisitions and THEN go out of business trying as they try to become a SAP or Oracle unsuccessfully.
When are they going to fix windows 8 so it does not lock up and the mouse works properly?
I’ll stick with Windows 7 too.
Now if they “upgrade” Windows 7 with new “old” file structure like Windows XP, that would be a great improvement!
The file structure they had in XP is exactly like a file cabinet. Why would they think of “improving” it?
In before the last ultra-loyalist Microsoft bunker guards arrive with maps showing that phantom Windows divisions in Redmond are already on their way to the front to repel and crush the enemy attack.
ping
I don’t think this is going to be an “upgrade” for Windows 7 in any real sense.
What software programs and hardware peripherals will that kill?
I lost a few software programs that would not work under Win7. Some of them have no comparable replacements.
I lost several peripherals from Win98 to XP. I also lost a laser printer from XP to Win7 — no drivers for the Win7-64 bit.
I’m going to hold out for when they start paying people to “upgrade”.
Free is still way too pricy for this POS. You couldn’t pay me to use it.
Huh? Apple charges for the equivalent of service packs. Win8.1 is already free to win 8 users. Apple just did the same thing with mavericks. Before that that charged for a service pack.