Brendan wrote:
From what I've heard Microsoft is planning to allow people that purchased Windows 8 to upgrade to Windows 10 for free within the first 6 months after Windows 10 is released.
Note: Upgrades are profit for Microsoft, so I'm not sure what Microsoft's motivation for this might be. I hope it's the first step towards luring users into some sort of future monthly subscription scheme (as that'd be good for hobby OSs, Linux, etc). Cheers,
Brendan
its a year, not 6 months (and after that year, it will likely be extended indefinitely), and its not just for win8... it also includes win7 (don't remember if it also includes vista or not)
the reasoning is quite simple: MS makes almost nothing selling upgrade copies (most people just continue running whatever version came with the computer until they replace the computer) -- almost all windows sales are for OEM & volume licenses, so this makes a lot of sense from MS perspective, since this will greatly increase the adoption rate (they are quite desperate to avoid another winXP situation) -- also, win10 will likely be the last version of windows ever created, with all further changes being made as updates to it
in other words, MS will loose the (very low selling) upgrade (and full version) sales, in exchange for everyone running the same platform (huge reduction in support -- probably save more money reducing this than they will loose from upgrade sales) while keeping the OEM and volume sales which already make up almost all of the income from windows anyway
windows already has a subscription model (and has since winXP, if not earlier) but the general consumer will never support that -- instead, MS is moving to a model where you simply use what came with your computer, and never upgrade (very little difference from MS perspective, since most people already do this, but people aren't stuck with 15-year-old OSes they expect MS to continue supporting and patching for free)