In an effort to remind myself that there is no free lunch, I was skeptical when I saw an upgrade to Windows 10 option sitting on my PC desktop this morning. Microsoft has apparently decided, in their good-natured will, that everyone who has Windows 7 and 8.1 should receive a free upgrade to Windows 10.
From what I’ve heard, Microsoft is claiming that Windows 10 will be their last operating system. Everything from now on will be updates, but I don’t know if they’re voluntary or not. I think they’re moving to the subscription model, but I’m not sure if they’re going to do that with the operating system or if they’re going to plan on making their money from applications that only work on their OS. The upgrade is free now, but I don’t know about in the future.
I have the developer preview on the server at home. I was going to fire it up in a VM and see what all the fuss is about but then I found our copy of ‘Blake’s 7’ so I spent most of the weekend ripping it to the media server. Time well spent I think.
Yeah, I hate how it feels like some grand decision on whether to upgrade or not. I only upgraded to Windows 7 three years ago (had been on XP otherwise) and I can’t help but feel comfortable with the idea of staying on Win7 as I had been with XP. I had to figure at some point, they’d get the grand idea to pick a simple structure, build updates to it over time. A subscription would work and seems inevitable with both Apple and Microsoft, though I would hope it’s an annual thing, rather than monthly. (Can you imagine if you didn’t pay your OS bill on time!) These things can easily go in the way of a cash grab, so I’d hate for that to throw that way.
Server platform products (seriously, check out the pricing on SQL Server)
Dev tools
Office
Azure, Azure, Azure (which includes Office 365)
Microsoft is transitioning to be a server platform & services company. If you happen to use their OS locally to build/test applications and administrate the services you’re using on that platform, and operate the PCs for the unwashed masses, all the better.
Microsoft doesn’t really even care what you run on Azure! Linux VMs, Wordpress installations, Oracle on Linux, all running on MS’s Azure infrastructure.
Remember when OS X upgrades were $130? Then $30? Then Apple said “screw it, we’re a hardware company, we’re making all our money on iDevices, let’s just make sure the devs of the apps we depend upon are always running the latest OS for their dev boxes.”
Apple’s not going to revert to a “paid for” OS model. Not for the foreseeable future anyway, and definitely not a monthly setup. They’re a consumer electronics company now and non-mobile OSes exist to support those devices; without a low-cost desktop OS, developers might go to another mobile platform (besides, Apple gets $100 + 30% from every developer who’s making money on the App Stores anyway - consider that the cost of running OS X which is required for building those apps).
I’m really curious what pricing for Win10 is going to look like sans pre-existing Win7/8 install. I kind of would like to have a few VMs locally instead of havening to fire up my Azure stuff, but right now since I don’t own a license for 7 or 8, I’d have to pay full price.
You know, even after my recent malware troubles, I never even thought twice about that notification, I just put in my email address and went from there (although why I had to do that, when Windows 8 requires the sign-in into the Windows site, is beyond me).
But the way it is going… I am sure that Windows 8 would “mysteriously” break if I don’t go for the free upgrade.
But I am glad they brought back the start menu. That “charms” thing bugs the hell out of me.
I was on XP until the end of last year when I got my new HP Envy 15 which came with Win 8.1. I will request my free copy of Win 10 for my wife’s laptop since she only uses it on the web and runs no other apps. I will not install it on mine for at least 6 months. Hopefully.
I got to admit, I liked the W7 rollout. They practically pushed test copies into the hands of techs to have them beat the wholly hell out of it. For W8, not so much. So what happens? W7 went out about as best as they could hope for in terms of drivers and compatibility and W8 went into the toilet. Granted the change in the Start Menu and usability for people was a big shadow over the release but I think giving it away is a better way of getting a good product out the door. Then again, I don’t want another U2 album forced down my gullet.
I’m on W7 and W8 (and Linux) on various machines both at home and at work. I rather like W8 as long as I can ignore the Metro screen. But on the big all-in-one touchscreen computer, the Metro interface is rather nice. I have not tried W10 yet to make an opinion.
I’ll update the same way I usually do, when forced.
I went to 3.11 because of a video game, I went to 95 because of a video game, it was even a Microsoft title so that meant they got paid twice, I went to XP for video games. I went to 7 because I bought a new laptop to play video games on.
I’d become a Linux fanboi if there was a killer game that I could only play on Ubuntu.
Still haven’t installed the preview copy of W10 yet (I have a good excuse. The Lego Minecraft knock off is on Steam.) but looking up as to why I should upgrade I came across this.
The charms bar is gone. The pop-up Start menu is back — it has live tiles on it by default, but you can remove those if you like. That “modern” or “Metro” interface is now confined only to a special tablet mode, and all applications run in windows on the desktop on normal PCs.
I’ll probably update my old laptop that runs W7 and maybe the all-in-one as it’s barely used. I’m going to hold off on the work machine and the media box for now. I still have a year to upgrade them.
I finally let Windows 7 do updates today. After the reboot, the Windows 8 version of the Microsoft logo showed up next to the clock in the task bar. I thought I got hit with a virus.
Turns out it’s the “Get Windows 10” notification. Gives you a few choices, but “Exit” is not one of them. Five seconds with Task Manager and GWE.exe is gone.