Windows 10 upgrade to be 'free' for one year
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
"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 is our intent that most of these devices will qualify, but some hardware/software requirements apply and feature availability may vary by device. Devices must be connected to the internet and have Windows Update enabled. ISP fees may apply. Windows 7 SP1 and Windows 8.1 Update required. Some editions are excluded: Windows 7 Enterprise, Windows 8/8.1 Enterprise, and Windows RT/RT 8.1. Active Software Assurance customers in volume licensing have the benefit to upgrade to Windows 10 Enterprise outside of this offer. We will be sharing more information and additional offer terms in coming months.
Instead not only did RT have virtually no software on it, but Microsoft went out of their way to make it "impossible" to build ARM-native software for it without essentially hacking into your own system.
Microsoft set RT on the road to ruin from almost day one. It is unsurprising that they're pulling the plug. I will say when they announced the Surface Pro 3 without a Surface RT 3, the writing was on the wall as far as end of life...
It seems that Microsoft is working on a new UI for Office which will eliminate the need for Win32 support on devices such as RT in the future.
At the same time they restrict what native applications can do on Metro devices, which limits the usefulness of existing codebases and forces Metro tablets to start over without the long time catalog of Windows software.
As far as I am aware, installing Windows in a VM has always been allowed by their license (although they tried to limit this in some way in the past and eventually backtracked, around the time of Vista if I recall). Will they attempt to return to such restrictions, or simply write people like me off as an extremely small portion of their install base from which they do not expect to extract further revenue?
My question is: what exactly is the "supported lifetime for the device?"
Is this "supported lifetime" defined by the manufacturer's warranty? The original OS date of installation? Something else?
It means if you install Windows 10 during the free period, it will be as if you bought a normal Windows license.
"Supported lifetime for the device" does not necessarily mean "supported lifetime for Windows 10." Although your interpretation may be correct, they have (intentionally or otherwise) used ambiguous wording in how they describe this.
If they meant that, they would have said that. There's a reason they chose the language they did.
Check http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/lifecycle for the current list of Windows.
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.
If they're a small business and use OEM installed copies of Windows and those OEM copies are Pro or lower then, yes, they get a free upgrade.
If it comes with Enterprise OEM they won't get the upgrade, and if they are on a volume licence (which most companies, even medium sized are) then they won't get a free upgrade and will instead need Software Assurance (subscription upgrades).
Many companies upgrade because of non-obvious benefits, namely how newer versions of Windows ineract with Active Directory, WDS, WUS, and similar. Every version of Windows comes with new and sometimes impressive enterprise features that consumers just rarely notice.
For example, go here[0] and look at the Enterprise column. It is these types of things that are what gets enterprise excited, not how pretty alt-tab looks or if it has Cortana.
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.
No. There is the Windows Store (all or most Metro apps, GUI) and things like NuGet for Visual Studio, but that's not what you're looking for. There are third-party solutions.
[EDIT: See sibling comments; W10 adds one.]
> Can I easily avoid DLL hell these days?
DLL Hell is no longer a concern. It's not a matter of avoiding it, it won't happen except perhaps in very unusual edge cases I'm not familiar with.
> 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?
You can do this. This is one reason Windows is so big in enterprise.
> Is it easily possible to connect to a Windows machine and administer it from a command line/scripting environment?
Yes.
> Can I disable the GUI and use Windows without tying up resources for unneeded functionality - i.e. no graphics card required?
In Server 2012 onwards, the GUI is optional.
> If its not onboard, can I validate that 3rd-party with signed keys? Is there an onboard key agent that will make this possible?
I am not 100% on what you want, but yes, Windows executables are commonly signed and that is integrated with the OS.
> 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?
Windows does not ship with a compiler or other developer tools installed. You can install Visual Studio 2013 Community Edition, which has all the features of Professional Edition, for free and without registration (afaik - I'm doing it right now, so if I'm wrong, I'll edit). You can of course install all the free-software development tools you want. Most tools support Windows reasonably well.
> Are these tools usable without requiring GUI involvement - i.e. remotely?
Yes, although most people don't do so. I've only fiddled around. I've heard that manually fiddling with msbuild is actually more pleasant than using the GUI.
If you prefer to use the compiler and build system at the command line and you're only interested in managed development (i.e., C#), you can download the Microsoft Build tools package[1], which contains the compilers and MSBuild for headless development.
[1] http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=4493...
>> Are these tools usable without requiring GUI involvement - i.e. remotely?
Yes, I do most of my building on the command line. Editing, of course, is in VS, but I've also had fine success with Vim.
Otherwise your post is great.
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-...
DLL hell was replaced by >20GB WinSxS directory. Every version of every single DLL, regardless if you ever used or will use one. Stored forever, with no usage stats, no mechanism of trimming, no archive option for never used ones. Introduced just in time to fill ~$40 worth of SSD with data that will NEVER EVER be read again.
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
Microsoft's biggest enemy is the old Microsoft that took years to update Windows XP and IExplorer 6. And then Vista happened, which brought no improvements, except a flawed and annoying security model, bloat and instability. And do I even need to rant on 8.0? So it's no wonder that users lost their appetite for updates.
However, I believe there is serious room for improvement in how we use our computers, especially our PCs. However that line on a single OS for all devices doesn't sound good to me, because there are fundamental differences between the devices in question and I hope that Microsoft will do more than marketing gimmicks and interfaces meant for tablets being shown on large screens that have keyboards.
What I wonder is how they plan to monetize free windows 10 as a service. I'm not going to be happy if I find it's another yearly fee like Office 365. I searched forever to find a legit activatable copy of office 2010 to avoid that.
I've seen no reports of free Windows 10 at all, just free upgrades in the first year of release from older Windows versions (so that Windows 10 rapidly builds an install base, rapidly becomes a target for developers, and therefore becomes more attractive as a new purchase due to the software built for it.)
Hearsay though.
People who bought a Windows XP machine in 2001 enjoyed 6+ years of free OS upgrades from Microsoft. Likewise, people who buy a Mac enjoy 5+ years of free OS upgrades from Apple.
If Microsoft wants to shift into a yearly release cycle and they don't give away the updates to their existing customers then they're essentially charging for service packs, which won't fly.
You can free updates to your current version. But never a free upgrade to the next major version.
WinXP users enjoyed six plus years of free updates to WinXP.
I don't see this type of release from Microsoft changing their update/upgrade model. They're just doing it as a means to push the user base harder to transition and possibly as a small admittance of the screw-up over Win8.
Apple, on the other hand, went from cheap upgrades to free upgrades over the last few versions of OS X. It's not the same thing as Microsoft's release pattern.
They've said themselves that they needed to get away from the stigma that is associated with 8.* - and that's great. Charging for it would be a bit harsh.
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 subscription? Is that just meaningless marketing speak?
I'll say this, Microsoft has a bad track record of making these events 50% longer than they should be and filing in the gaps with marketing department nonsense that doesn't mean anything. There were some bits of that that were simply cringe and or a huge time waster.
Some fruit-named company do these presentations better. They're still better than Google however...
Since when does Microsoft decide what the "supported lifetime of the device" is? All of my devices running Windows were hand built by me from best-of-breed components that I frequently swap out.
I could see it making sense if it was for the supported lifetime of Windows 10 because that at least is something where Microsoft should be expected to define a final end of support date. But that is not what it says, and even that would be odd...Microsoft is going to either turn off my OS when they decide to no longer support it, or make me start paying to use it at that point?
Makes no sense any way you slice it, at least as currently (poorly) communicated.
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.
My interpretation is that Windows 10 will by the last 'version' of Windows, in other words, that there won't be a Windows 11. So, for as long as you own the device, Windows will be supported on it.
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.
Finally, you do not have to port your app to all devices.
And hopefully you, as a user will be able to control how much access each app has to the computer.
Imagine buying a new smart-phone with lets say Android, then you install Windows 10 on it instead and everything just works.
The only problem I see is that they need to make the SDK easier for me to start making native apps instead of web apps. Especially the UI part.
After 1 year from release you must pay to migrate from 7/8 -> 10.
Regardless of when you migrate, system upgrades are included for the lifetime of the device.
This is a push to get everyone onto the new platform and jumpstart the ecosystem.
Remember XP having to be re-authorized if you changed too much hardware? It was before then too.
I know I do at least.
The issue was the lack of applications for the OS.
The only exception where the Nokia Here navigation apps.