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With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way

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Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way

#131

Post by mseidl »

sliverstorm wrote: post #65
zaidf wrote: post #27

I miss the Microsoft that was known for making solid products that could have a 5-10 year shelf life. It is sad that Office 2007 works better for me than Office 2010; Windows 7 better than Windows 8.

Their products get better with age. XP SP2 was a totally different beast from XP. Vista was improved a lot post-launch, and so was Windows 7. I still remember when Office 2007 was "buggy and slow" compared to Office 2003, but today no one runs 2003 anymore and 2007 is the reliable standard. Windows 8.1 has improved on Windows 8. So, give it time.

And using Windows ME, aged 14 years like a nice wine...

Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way

#132

Post by higherpurpose »

kamaal wrote: post #34

Actually a free Windows OS would actually be great. Here in India, Pirated Windows OS are like as common as mosquitoes. No one but Microsoft was losing in all this. The price of Windows is generally prohibitively high and was by no way affordable to home and even small business users. The only option was to pirate them or use Ubuntu. People walk in to buy a laptop, check the difference in price for Laptops with Windo…

Yes, but pirated Windows actually works better for Microsoft than free Windows. Why? Because at least they can keep asking $200 with a straight face for a version of Windows, if Windows is just pirated in countries like India or China.

But if they give it for free there - then the whole equation changes in western countries, too, and people will be demanding they get a free version of Windows as well - and then how will Microsoft make money?

Anyway, I don't think Microsoft will do this. At best they will either make it free for OEM's - not consumers - so their devices don't cost more compared to Android devices at the same specs, or they give a free version of Windows that's so crippled people will still prefer the pirated "Pro" edition.

Either way, I truly believe Microsoft will get out of the consumer market within a few short years, because they won't be profitable in it anymore, either because of forces they can't handle, such as simply losing market share and people not wanting Windows anymore, or because they give it for free, and as I said, that will get everyone to not buy Windows anymore anyway, if they truly give it away for free.

Whichever way they go, Windows is getting commoditized, and it's not good for Microsoft. This is a reactionary move, and reactionary moves are never good.

Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way

#133

Post by higherpurpose »

gosukiwi wrote: post #58
usaphp wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing in Russia and all former soviet republics, I don't know any of my friends back there who has ever purchased a licensed copy of windows.

Same thing for South America, 99% of Windows copies are pirated.

That begs the question - what does Microsoft really gain with this? Poor countries never bought Windows anyway, and rich countries will now be getting it for free, instead of paying money for it.

Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way

#135

Post by boobsbr »

nnq wrote: post #129
boobsbr wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 7 crawls on my personal laptop and office desktop. Both have i5 processors and 4 GB of RAM. It takes several minutes to cold-boot or wake up from hibernation and load Chrome. Minutes of non-stop HD reading. OTOH Linux Mint boots up faster and is way more responsive. It's actually faster to cold boot Mint than to wake up from hibernation on Windows. It's anecdotal evidence, but for me Linux is very superior in…

Interesting to know about the difference. I never cared about boot time or wake up from hibernation. I always keep my mobile systems charged and in stand by when not used and I do a shutdown and cold boot maybe once a week (I know, waste of power and battery cycles and all :) ). The cpus are irrelevant here so it might be a real filesystems perf difference. What do you use, ext4?

yeah, ext4.

Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way

#136

Post by boobsbr »

300bps wrote: post #130
boobsbr wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 7 crawls on my personal laptop and office desktop. Both have i5 processors and 4 GB of RAM. It takes several minutes to cold-boot or wake up from hibernation and load Chrome. Minutes of non-stop HD reading. OTOH Linux Mint boots up faster and is way more responsive. It's actually faster to cold boot Mint than to wake up from hibernation on Windows. It's anecdotal evidence, but for me Linux is very superior in…

4 GB of RAM costs about $35. My main PC at home has 16 GB of RAM, an i7-3770 and a 128 OCZ Vertex 4 SSD as the boot drive. Boot time from off to Windows 8.1 login screen is 6 seconds. That's not hibernation or sleep mode - that's from completely off. The entire system cost $850. Is that an unreasonable price to pay for a desktop computer?

In Brazil, yeah, pretty unreasonable. We get crap hardware and exorbitant prices for anything other than the low-end stuff.

Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way

#137

Post by ToniCipriani »

boobsbr wrote: post #126
nnq wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you trolling? What's the hardware configuration? (Just to make things clear before what follows, I'm not a Windows fanboy and I use like 70% of the time Windows and the rest Ubuntu or Fedora. And I'd choose Linux over windows anytime. But the current state of Gnome and KDE is deplorable! ...both from a UX/I perspective and from a performance perspective. Actually the only DE that doesn't make me wanna push my fis…

Windows 7 crawls on my personal laptop and office desktop. Both have i5 processors and 4 GB of RAM. It takes several minutes to cold-boot or wake up from hibernation and load Chrome. Minutes of non-stop HD reading. OTOH Linux Mint boots up faster and is way more responsive. It's actually faster to cold boot Mint than to wake up from hibernation on Windows. It's anecdotal evidence, but for me Linux is very superior in…

Definitely something with your machines. My 3 year old ThinkPad X120e with the miniscule AMD E350 processor runs fine with Windows 7. Even my old single core XBMC machine with 2GB memory ran fine until I switched it to Linux (not for performance reasons, though)

Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way

#138

Post by redblacktree »

mseidl wrote: post #131
sliverstorm wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their products get better with age. XP SP2 was a totally different beast from XP. Vista was improved a lot post-launch, and so was Windows 7. I still remember when Office 2007 was "buggy and slow" compared to Office 2003, but today no one runs 2003 anymore and 2007 is the reliable standard. Windows 8.1 has improved on Windows 8. So, give it time.

And using Windows ME, aged 14 years like a nice wine...

Not a great vintage.

Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way

#139

Post by rbanffy »

nnq wrote: post #91
ekianjo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If only Microsoft can make Windows affordable, they can kill all competitors instantly. Yeah maybe for the consumers market, but that's already the case with Piracy anyway. But price is not the only issue, Windows is just horrible in so many ways that there's a number of people who will not come back to it even if it's 100% free. I keep Windows (7) as dual-boot on my desktop PC, where I run OpenSuse most of the tim…

Are you trolling? What's the hardware configuration? (Just to make things clear before what follows, I'm not a Windows fanboy and I use like 70% of the time Windows and the rest Ubuntu or Fedora. And I'd choose Linux over windows anytime. But the current state of Gnome and KDE is deplorable! ...both from a UX/I perspective and from a performance perspective. Actually the only DE that doesn't make me wanna push my fis…

On my machines, a Dell v131 and an Acer Aspire One, Linux is noticeably snappier than Windows. While it's bearable, it's far less fluid and I can understand why someone would find it less than ideal.

Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way

#140

Post by cbhl »

higherpurpose wrote: post #132
kamaal wrote: post #34

Actually a free Windows OS would actually be great. Here in India, Pirated Windows OS are like as common as mosquitoes. No one but Microsoft was losing in all this. The price of Windows is generally prohibitively high and was by no way affordable to home and even small business users. The only option was to pirate them or use Ubuntu. People walk in to buy a laptop, check the difference in price for Laptops with Windo…

Yes, but pirated Windows actually works better for Microsoft than free Windows. Why? Because at least they can keep asking $200 with a straight face for a version of Windows, if Windows is just pirated in countries like India or China. But if they give it for free there - then the whole equation changes in western countries, too, and people will be demanding they get a free version of Windows as well - and then how w…

I actually believe that the opposite makes more sense -- make it free for consumers, but charge the OEMs a small(er) fee, since the OEMs are where all the sales are at.

I'm pretty sure almost all the Windows revenues nowadays come from the OEMs, not from the boxed sales.

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