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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

#71

Post by mercurial »

csense wrote: post #57
beagle3 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your interest and Microsoft's interests haven't been aligned in years. Your interest is to keep an OS supported. Microsoft's interest is to release Browser and DirectX updates only for the latest-and-greatest, so that you'd updgrade. Your interest is an open ecosystem. Microsoft's interest is to have a closed garden. (They haven't been successful with that one, but they're trying). Your interest might be a usable Des…

> Microsoft's interest is to ram their touch interface down your throat so that you'd get used to it, and your next phone may possibly run Windows s/Microsoft/Canonical/ s/Windows/Ubuntu/

On the other hand, a different ui is one apt-get away in Ubuntu. It's much less trivial on Windows.

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

#72

Post by ekianjo »

stan_rogers wrote: post #69
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…

You may be amazed at how much "really have to" covers for a lot of people. There are not nix-based versions for much of the software that people actually use (unless you stretch things far enough to include OS X in the "well, that's nix" category, ignoring the specific requirement to run OS X). The world isn't all about futzing with code and using browsers.

Noticed my first sentence? "Consumers market"

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

#73

Post by ekianjo »

adamnemecek wrote: post #70
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…

> Windows is just horrible in so many ways Care to enumerate a couple?

I think I did: lack of reactivity between the time you click on something and something actually occurs on screen (talking about OS feel in general), same applications running much slower on Windows, higher general memory consumption, extreme sluggishness when running multiple applications in parallel, extensive usage of scratch disks while OpenSuse seems to be able to use RAM more effectively...

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

#74

Post by nsmartt »

stan_rogers wrote: post #69
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…

You may be amazed at how much "really have to" covers for a lot of people. There are not nix-based versions for much of the software that people actually use (unless you stretch things far enough to include OS X in the "well, that's nix" category, ignoring the specific requirement to run OS X). The world isn't all about futzing with code and using browsers.

I've used GNU/Linux for around 3 years. The only way I could even consider using Windows again would be with cygwin. The programs I use on a daily basis don't have easily available counterparts for Windows. It very much goes both ways.

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

#75

Post by acchow »

shmerl wrote: post #50
acchow wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by Linux you mean iPads and Chromebooks.

No, I mean regular Linux. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7338814

Let's look at the numbers.

Excluding post-PC products, classic desktop and laptop OS market share is:

Windows - 90.8% OS X - 7.7% Linux - 1.5%

Linux has a long way to go.

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

#76

Post by mercurial »

beagle3 wrote: post #23
bifftannen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can script the OS and application install with WDS, SCCM, and AD. Just because you can't or won't do it doesn't mean it can't be done.

That's almost funny. I was too lazy to do things properly (kickstart script, etc.) so I have a bash script with about 10 "apt-get install" lines that set up everything I want on Ubuntu or debian, and a few more "echo" lines that configure 90% of my other preferences. 50 line scripts that contain very little other than the names of the programs I want or the configuration I want. Let's say I just got a new computer wi…

> I was too lazy to do things properly (kickstart script, etc.) so I have a bash script with about 10 "apt-get install" lines that set up everything I want on Ubuntu or debian, and a few more "echo" lines that configure 90% of my other preferences.

You can do even better than that with NixOS: the system configuration is a single file (though it's possible to split it into different files). The file contains, if you use the declarative system-wide installation system, the list of all non-default software and their non-default configuration. If you copy the file to your new system and use "nixos-rebuild switch", everything will be downloaded and configured correctly.

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

#77

Post by RyanZAG »

ekianjo wrote: post #62
RyanZAG wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is a business. Their interests and your interests have never and will never be aligned. They may occasionally release products which can solve your needs - but their interest in this case is to extract the maximum amount of money from you in exchange for solving your need. Solving the need has never been an explicit interest in itself. Moving to an advertising based pricing model doesn't change any alignmen…

> Microsoft is a business. Their interests and your interests have never and will never be aligned. They may occasionally release products which can solve your needs - but their interest in this case is to extract the maximum amount of money from you in exchange for solving your need. Solving the need has never been an explicit interest in itself. You can say the same thing for every business then. I don't think you…

> You can say the same thing for every business then.

That's exactly what I am saying. It might appear that a businesses interests align with yours - and the business will certainly scream it to the heavens that they're aligned. But they are never really aligned. You will feel much less betrayed on a daily basis when you understand that. Oil companies destroying the reefs, mining companies contaminating water supplies, manufacturing companies off-shoring labor to ghettos, small mom&pop shops installing wifi trackers, Software companies adding adverts, etc.

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

#78

Post by tanzam75 »

Aaronontheweb wrote: post #54
aegiso wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

End-user Windows licenses haven't been a significant source of income for Microsoft for a very long time. They make their money from their enterprise ecosystem, and end-user Windows serves only to support that ecosystem. So unfortunately, I hate to break it to you that as an end user the money you're giving Microsoft for their products never gave you control. But on the bright side, pissing off the end users that pro…

> End-user Windows licenses haven't been a significant source of income for Microsoft for a very long time. If ~$20b in revenue last year isn't a big business... http://www.microsoft.com/investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Earn... 65% of that $20b comes from OEMs, which is 100% consumer. edit: the exact quote from the earnings statement I linked: "Excluding the impact of the Windows Upgrade Offer, OEM revenue decreased 15…

> 65% of that $20b comes from OEMs, which is 100% consumer.

No, OEM is not 100% consumer. It's not even half.

A large number of OEM machines are sold with Pro preloaded. These go to businesses. (Some consumers buy Pro, but some small businesses buy Home. Assume it more or less averages out.)

Last quarter, Windows OEM revenues overall decreased by just 3%, despite the fact that non-Pro OEM revenues decreased by 20%. Why? Because Pro revenues increased by 12%!

In fact, the slides even said: "Windows OEM Pro revenue up 12%, driven by higher Windows Pro mix in large enterprises and developed markets." So they explicitly acknowledge that enterprise customers are included in OEM revenue.

If you do the algebra, Pro now accounts for 61% of OEM revenues. That means that Home accounts for 39%.

$20 billion * 0.97 * 0.65 * 0.39 = $4.92 billion.

$4.92 billion in a company that took in $73.7 billion of revenues in fiscal year 2013. For comparison, Bing had revenues of $3.2 billion in fiscal year 2013.

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

#79

Post by rando289 »

panabee wrote: post #8
rando289 wrote: post #5

Windows for many years has given out hundreds of millions of copies for free by intentionally limiting the strength of their DRM and licensing enforcement. This makes perfect competitive sense.

I believe they recognized piracy was actually an early form of the freemium model. Rather than forcing every consumer to pay up, they concentrated for many years on extracting money from users with deep pockets -- i.e., enterprises and OEM partners.

Yes, thats basically what I meant to say.

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

#80

Post by shmerl »

acchow wrote: post #75
shmerl wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I mean regular Linux. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7338814

Let's look at the numbers. Excluding post-PC products, classic desktop and laptop OS market share is: Windows - 90.8% OS X - 7.7% Linux - 1.5% Linux has a long way to go.

Numbers aren't enough. Dynamics matter even more. Obviously MS isn't scared of current numbers but scared of where things are moving.
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