21–30 of 75 posts
Can someone explain why it would only be free for the first year? To spur adoption? It just seems like more trouble than it's worth to start charging people for it sometime in the future.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I understood from the video it means you get the chance to upgrade within a year of release. They also said you'll be receiving automated updates for the supported life time of the device (whatever that means)
Sounds more like a year long trial period as you never seem to quite own the "free" copy. Not exactly what loyal Windows 7 and 8 users would have wanted (a real free lifetime copy), but a genuine step in the right direction.
"For the first year after Windows 10 is available, we will be making available a free upgrade to Windows 10 for all devices running Windows 8.1. Once a device is upgraded to Windows 10, we'll be keeping it current for the supported lifetime for the device."
If that's not clear enough for you, I don't know what to say! Furthermore the actual public awareness campaign hasn't started (this announcement came two hours ago, remember) so chill out for a second before calling something a poor job of communicating. They have a limited time to show off a huge amount of features including a goddamn top-secret holographic VR helmet, plus the details on the release aren't even ironed out yet, so if they didn't spend an extra five minutes drilling down on the release strategy (8 months away at this point) you're going to have to forgive them.
It's not the price of Windows that was keeping people from adopting Windows 8. It's the irrelevancy and the fact that corporations don't see the ROI. The time it would take to upgrade their company isn't worth the gains, which are minimal. Unless Windows 10 proves to be a massive improvement in performance or usability, I suspect it's uptake will be just as anemic, free or not.
Users in general don't upgrade unless forced, because non-technical folks are conservative. All of Microsoft's competition have encouraged (free) updates in one way or another, with much less regard towards backwards compatibility. This also creates expectations for developers, assuming that a majority will upgrade in a timely manner, therefore users feel compelled to upgrade otherwise their favorite apps may stop be…
It's not the price of Windows that was keeping people from adopting Windows 8. It's the irrelevancy and the fact that corporations don't see the ROI. The time it would take to upgrade their company isn't worth the gains, which are minimal. Unless Windows 10 proves to be a massive improvement in performance or usability, I suspect it's uptake will be just as anemic, free or not.
What prevented companies from updating was the bastardized UI requiring retraining and extra IT support. I don't think Windows 10 necessarily needs a huge improvement. Companies will either update when they upgrade the physical computers and the new ones happen to come with Windows 10, or when some crucial piece of software drops support for 7. They won't actively avoid 10 or downgrade like some did for 8.
It's not the price of Windows that was keeping people from adopting Windows 8. It's the irrelevancy and the fact that corporations don't see the ROI. The time it would take to upgrade their company isn't worth the gains, which are minimal. Unless Windows 10 proves to be a massive improvement in performance or usability, I suspect it's uptake will be just as anemic, free or not.
Does it come with package management yet? Can I easily avoid DLL hell these days? Can I add my own local repository and use it to maintain a fleet of workstations, making sure they always have the same configuration no matter what?
Is it easily possible to connect to a Windows machine and administer it from a command line/scripting environment? Can I disable the GUI and use Windows without tying up resources for unneeded functionality - i.e. no graphics card required?
Is all of this onboard, or does some/most of it require the involvement of a 3rd-party add-on? If its not onboard, can I validate that 3rd-party with signed keys? Is there an onboard key agent that will make this possible?
Is there an easy way to get a compiler onboard without requiring registration and so on, or does it ship with development tools already set up and configured? Are these tools usable without requiring GUI involvement - i.e. remotely?
These are earnest questions, I honestly don't know. If the majority of the answers are in the affirmative, then I'll give Windows 10 a try - it would make a nice change from what I've gotten used to with my Linux machine.
It's not the price of Windows that was keeping people from adopting Windows 8. It's the irrelevancy and the fact that corporations don't see the ROI. The time it would take to upgrade their company isn't worth the gains, which are minimal. Unless Windows 10 proves to be a massive improvement in performance or usability, I suspect it's uptake will be just as anemic, free or not.
I would have upgraded several of my machines to Windows 8 if it wasn't for the price. I already have a bunch of Windows 7 licenses.
It's not the price of Windows that was keeping people from adopting Windows 8. It's the irrelevancy and the fact that corporations don't see the ROI. The time it would take to upgrade their company isn't worth the gains, which are minimal. Unless Windows 10 proves to be a massive improvement in performance or usability, I suspect it's uptake will be just as anemic, free or not.
I haven't used Windows in 10+ years, so I've got some questions for those who are smarter than me on the subject of Windows: Does it come with package management yet? Can I easily avoid DLL hell these days? Can I add my own local repository and use it to maintain a fleet of workstations, making sure they always have the same configuration no matter what? Is it easily possible to connect to a Windows machine and admin…
Not really
> Can I easily avoid DLL hell these days?
Yes, it just stores every version on the drive, seems to work
> Can I add my own local repository and use it to maintain a fleet of workstations, making sure they always have the same configuration no matter what?
For free? not easily.
> Is it easily possible to connect to a Windows machine and administer it from a command line/scripting environment?
Powershell does a lot more on this front
> Can I disable the GUI and use Windows without tying up resources for unneeded functionality - i.e. no graphics card required?
Considering Windows Server Core still has a GUI? no.
> does it ship with development tools already set up and configured?
No
It's not the price of Windows that was keeping people from adopting Windows 8. It's the irrelevancy and the fact that corporations don't see the ROI. The time it would take to upgrade their company isn't worth the gains, which are minimal. Unless Windows 10 proves to be a massive improvement in performance or usability, I suspect it's uptake will be just as anemic, free or not.
I haven't used Windows in 10+ years, so I've got some questions for those who are smarter than me on the subject of Windows: Does it come with package management yet? Can I easily avoid DLL hell these days? Can I add my own local repository and use it to maintain a fleet of workstations, making sure they always have the same configuration no matter what? Is it easily possible to connect to a Windows machine and admin…
Package management: Yes[0]
DLLs: Do not know
Local Repository: Seems to be a part of package management based on things I've seen
Command line/scripting: Powershell has been around for a while now and is quite good, but a very different idiom than UNIX shell[1].
Disable GUI: Don't believe so, but can't say for sure
Onboard: The above is all native
Easy compiler: unsure.
[0]http://www.howtogeek.com/200334/windows-10-includes-a-linux-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I understood from the video it means you get the chance to upgrade within a year of release. They also said you'll be receiving automated updates for the supported life time of the device (whatever that means)
They've done a really poor job of communicating that. The free upgrade for one year thing is fairly cut and dry. However what they meant by that "we'll support updates for the lifetime of the device" is completely meaningless and confusing. As opposed to what they've been doing until now..? Also they keep on talking about "Windows as a service" with zero clarification on what that means. Is Windows becoming a paid su…
Plus, the press event was like an hour ago, with the release date several months from now. No one is rushing out to buy it at the stores right now. There's time for you to be less confused.