Actually a free Windows OS would actually be great. Here in India, Pirated Windows OS are like as common as mosquitoes. No one but Microsoft was losing in all this. The price of Windows is generally prohibitively high and was by no way affordable to home and even small business users. The only option was to pirate them or use Ubuntu.
People walk in to buy a laptop, check the difference in price for Laptops with Windows OS and Laptops without them. Often the difference is in the range 7 to 8 thousand rupees. The obvious option is Pirate Windows OS or Ubuntu.
Instead of making it totally free. Microsoft can even charge a reasonable price and I can assure you people will pay it. The problem was never with Microsoft or Windows. The problem was always affordability.
If only Microsoft can make Windows affordable, they can kill all competitors instantly.
> Actually a free Windows OS would actually be great. Here in India, Pirated Windows OS are like as common as mosquitoes. No one but Microsoft was losing in all this.
Actually, MS knew all along that piracy is rampant and they let it work for them quite well. With everyone familiarizing themselves with nothing other than MS products, MS knew for a fact that money would eventually come, in sacks that too. It wasn't a loss in the long term.
Markets like China and India are different wherein enforcement is not that easy. Heck, proper enforcement would even make people opt for a hassle free and priceless option like *nix. So MS chose not to bother too much about piracy in domestic installations and thus sorta sent a message like "go on, use it, we don't care" and fueled piracy to an extent, if I may say.
For an average consumer in India, computers are synonymous with Windows products. It's not a choice for them at all, they do not have a choice!
Even the local coke/hash peddler would give out stuff for free to get one hooked. ;)
> 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 time, and whenever I have to boot into Windows the sluggishness of it all (on the very same hardware) makes me want to pull my hair out. The very same application (Firefox) is way less reactive on Windows. And just opening a window (no pun intended) takes way more time, too... the overall experience is just deplorable. I only boot into that environment when I really HAVE to.
Are you trolling? What's the hardware configuration?
(Just to make things clear before what follows, I'm not a Windows fanboy and I use like 70% of the time Windows and the rest Ubuntu or Fedora. And I'd choose Linux over windows anytime. But the current state of Gnome and KDE is deplorable! ...both from a UX/I perspective and from a performance perspective. Actually the only DE that doesn't make me wanna push my fist through the display after ~30min is Xfce and it's what I daily use.)
"Default config" Windows 7 and 8 feel as responsive as KDE, Gnome or Unity to me. If you want more speed, there are lots of things to tweak and trim down, but I never felt the need, not even on very cheap netbooks! The only real performance improvements I got by tweaking were from tweaking individual app's obscure perf settings (like Matlab or Photoshop).
About "just opening a window": admitedly, windows explorer does very weird things from time to time, but just because you're on Windows it doesn't mean you have to stick with the default file manager - find one that suits you (and btw, some third party alternatives are actually faster than explorer).
Also it's a well know fact that some apps have better performance on some OSs than other: Firefox has always been visibly faster on Linux, Opera (the old Presto engine version) has always been visibly faster on Windows etc. Also, since about ~5 versions ago the Firefox devs really got their shit together and got rid of some of what seemed to me like "Windows only memory leaks" and probably did some ui thread optimizations to make things feel more responsive, so the perceived performance feels as if it increased by about ~60% on Windows, even if the actual webpage rendering speed is probably close to the same.
Again, it may seem that I'm a Windows/Microsoft fanboy, but even if feature-wise the Linux DEs are way better, if you compare each feature with its equivalent, you'll see that there are zillions of little details that Linux "failed to learn from Windows." And the current DEs seem to play some stupid iOS/MacOS-copycat-ing game instead of stealing more of the true UI/X innovation that came with Windows 8 for example (and yes, I'm actually one of the people that love the Win 8 hybrid tablet/desktop gui and apps concept - I just think that Microsoft blew it by over-geeking it, as any kind of "hybrid" UI will appeal mostly to "geeks" and much less to "average joes" that prefers a "one-piece uniform experience", even if it's really suboptimal).
Windows 7 crawls on my personal laptop and office desktop. Both have i5 processors and 4 GB of RAM. It takes several minutes to cold-boot or wake up from hibernation and load Chrome. Minutes of non-stop HD reading.
OTOH Linux Mint boots up faster and is way more responsive. It's actually faster to cold boot Mint than to wake up from hibernation on Windows.
It's anecdotal evidence, but for me Linux is very superior in this aspect.
Interesting to know about the difference. I never cared about boot time or wake up from hibernation. I always keep my mobile systems charged and in stand by when not used and I do a shutdown and cold boot maybe once a week (I know, waste of power and battery cycles and all :) ).
The cpus are irrelevant here so it might be a real filesystems perf difference. What do you use, ext4?
4 GB of RAM costs about $35. My main PC at home has 16 GB of RAM, an i7-3770 and a 128 OCZ Vertex 4 SSD as the boot drive. Boot time from off to Windows 8.1 login screen is 6 seconds. That's not hibernation or sleep mode - that's from completely off.
The entire system cost $850. Is that an unreasonable price to pay for a desktop computer?
Definitely something with your machines. My 3 year old ThinkPad X120e with the miniscule AMD E350 processor runs fine with Windows 7. Even my old single core XBMC machine with 2GB memory ran fine until I switched it to Linux (not for performance reasons, though)
You must have some other issues then. I have the same setup and the system just flies, and I'm not even using a SSD. Boot and wake happen in about half a minute.
There is lot of crapware on Windows (even in default installation) which slows down system a lot. Antivirus, toolbars, keyloggers...
Also Linux (and nix) in general IS FASTER*. Especially the filesystem operations and multitasking. I use Java and the same build takes 2x time on Windows.
In windows it is generally needed to disable some services to get some performance back.
About the copy-cats, I think Ubuntu tablet is a better way to the hybrid tablet/desktop, for the simple reason of not having market/store restrictions about it. It is still not released to production, or even finished as the Win8 is. But I think in the long term it will be much better.
Really? Chrome has always been considerably faster on Linux but I was under the impression Mozilla always had an easier time optimising their Windows builds, at least in the past. Certainly the hardware acceleration is better on Windows.
I was not referring to the page rendering which includes hardware acceleration. It may be better on Windows, I dunno. But the UI responsiveness was definitely worse on Windows.
By UI "responsiveness" I mean that there are two very different things: a browser can be dog slow at rendering a page and at doing animations or even at network transfers, and at the same time it can start "instantly", open/close a tab instantly, react instantly to me clicking on a link etc. I think you can see this best on a multiprocess browser like chrome: sometimes a page with high res pics and animations is snail slow, sometimes the inspector works in slow-motion or ups your cpu to 60% because of a weird script, but at the same time these things happen, the "chrome ui" can still feel pretty snappy, opening/closing stabs in an instant, opening/changing settings, doing non-page-related suff via extensions or maybe even clicking a lin inside an otherwise slowed-to-a-crawl page can go to that link "instantly".
I'd take an always responsive UI over "real speed" anytime (and yeah, Windows' DE can suck at this, but except for specific apps it sucks just as much as KDE or Gnome).
On my machines, a Dell v131 and an Acer Aspire One, Linux is noticeably snappier than Windows. While it's bearable, it's far less fluid and I can understand why someone would find it less than ideal.
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.
I also haven't used Windows as my main OS in over a decade. I only ever use it when I absolutely have to - and these days, the list of reasons is dwindling and diminishing at a great pace.
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...
I find it hard to believe something else isn't going on because some of those things are the exact opposite of my experience. Firefox has always been more responsive on Windows. Its acceleration architecture is still more advanced on Windows. In fact, everything is more responsive and opens faster on Windows. The scheduler is way better for desktop use. Windows never becomes unresponsive for me because of background applications even though I have the scheduler set to prioritise background processes, whereas even quite recently on Linux I have still found compiling or such in the background can lead to X temporarily becoming unresponsive. Windows is certainly leagues more stable than KDE (if that's what you're using). In fact no part of Windows has crashed for me in years.
These are just my experiences. I have other problems with Linux on the desktop too mainly relating to GPU stuff. Personally, while I love many aspects of Linux on the desktop and use my Linux VM all the time, I would say I still find the overall experience to be "just deplorable"
It's strange that we have both very much opposite experiences. I'm not sure what you are using when you mention "linux" because responsiveness depends a lot on the distro. I wouldn't use Ubuntu, for example. As for Firefox, I guess it depends on your config/RAM/processor, but i have a i5 with 4 gigs of RAM and opening Firefox with saved tabs is slow as hell on Windows 7 while much faster on OpenSuse. By the way I'm using KDE and I don't think it's that bad in terms of stability, while I have experienced a few crashes (maybe once a month or something). It's true that Windows (from 7) has become very stable, nothing like what XP used to be: it does not crash to blue screens anymore, but it still can become very sluggish when I do audio/video editing and basically nothing much runs in parallel because it's just unusable.
It is strange. I've used gentoo for years, arch, debian, ubuntu and probably others variously. All pretty similar experiences though I agree on ubuntu.
I don't know, maybe it is only my experience, but I have tried Ubuntu quite a few times over the last years, on three different machines, and every single time I experienced problems, especially GPU related, speed is always an issue as well. Just try to search for something in Ubuntu and it just doesn't feel responsive.
I'm in no way saying that windows is a better platform, but if you have enough RAM, it is a fast OS.
I eventually found that turning off Aero and 90% of the stuff in Performance -> Visual Effects made a huge difference on my Core i7 laptop with external monitor. (Windows 7).
The giveaway was high memory usage by "dwm.exe"; it seemed to have enough memory pressure that unused windows would have their decor paged out, so switching between applications had to wait for a page fault to be serviced from disk.
all of these points were significantly more of a problem in windows XP, especially responsiveness under ram pressure and 100% cpu load.
Windows 7/8 has made all of these issues significantly better. If you are comparing XP to modern linux, its not much of a fair comparison to compare a 13+ year old OS to a modern one.
My favorite one is being unable to delete an open file - this has consequences on upgrading software that has to stop running and release its files before the upgrade starts. There are also the various ways Windows Explorer fails with very long paths. Or the subtly different ways the CMD.EXE fails on the same use case.
Yes, but pirated Windows actually works better for Microsoft than free Windows. Why? Because at least they can keep asking $200 with a straight face for a version of Windows, if Windows is just pirated in countries like India or China.
But if they give it for free there - then the whole equation changes in western countries, too, and people will be demanding they get a free version of Windows as well - and then how will Microsoft make money?
Anyway, I don't think Microsoft will do this. At best they will either make it free for OEM's - not consumers - so their devices don't cost more compared to Android devices at the same specs, or they give a free version of Windows that's so crippled people will still prefer the pirated "Pro" edition.
Either way, I truly believe Microsoft will get out of the consumer market within a few short years, because they won't be profitable in it anymore, either because of forces they can't handle, such as simply losing market share and people not wanting Windows anymore, or because they give it for free, and as I said, that will get everyone to not buy Windows anymore anyway, if they truly give it away for free.
Whichever way they go, Windows is getting commoditized, and it's not good for Microsoft. This is a reactionary move, and reactionary moves are never good.
I actually believe that the opposite makes more sense -- make it free for consumers, but charge the OEMs a small(er) fee, since the OEMs are where all the sales are at.
I'm pretty sure almost all the Windows revenues nowadays come from the OEMs, not from the boxed sales.
Well i've to agree with you. It's not just in india in Sri lanka also the price of Windows is just too high for a normal person to afford. The price of a genuine Windows is about 40k. And the price difference of a laptop with Windows and a laptop without windows is around 15k
I might be wrong but I don't know why so many people prefer Windows over linux. The unity gnome interface is pretty horrible imo. Plus i don't find good alternatives to my windows software for linux. There are alternatives but not as good as the ones i use on windows.
Also when I used Ubuntu i've update my whole system once in every 6 months. Also if i don't the latest softwares will not support my old ubuntu. After getting a new laptop I switched back to windows.
That begs the question - what does Microsoft really gain with this? Poor countries never bought Windows anyway, and rich countries will now be getting it for free, instead of paying money for it.
As a Microsoft customer, this alienates me from them. Paid software means that our interests are aligned: I want good software and Microsoft wants to make good software so that I buy it.
Free commercial software means that I'll have to pay through other means, typically means that I'll have less control over.
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 Desktop OS like Win7. 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 - regardless of what's good for you.
Your interest is a usable system that just works. Microsoft's interest is providing a "Protected Media Path" that would degrade your experience if your equipment is not xIAA certified.
You already have NO control. You're already paying through other means. You might have had an illusion of control taken away from you - but that's a good thing.
>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).
I might get some heat for this but I must say Windows is still the OS with the least closed garden or heck even a garden. To get even the legitimate and popular x86 applications you still have to manually browse to websites and download it. You can install whatever you want whether it has a digital signature or not and yes it also includes the plentitude of crapwares and spywares.
>Your interest might be a usable Desktop OS like Win7. Microsoft's interest is to ram their touch interface down your throat so that you'd get used to it.
Or maybe some people like a touch OS with their touchscreen laptop and its just MS thinking forward? I don't know what other OS can you recommend that is touch friendly for my Surface pro?
>You already have NO control. You're already paying through other means. You might have had an illusion of control taken away from you - but that's a good thing.
No sure what you mean by this. I don't see MS cloud apps and ads preinstalled on my OS. I don't see it being sponsored by Amazon shopping experience either. The only crap that comes pre installed is done by the manufactures but MS can't even do anything about it, thanks to the anti-trust decisions.
> I might get some heat for this but I must say Windows is still the OS with the least closed garden or heck even a garden.
The Windows App Store is as closed as Apple's, just not as successful - and I was comparing interests, not achievements.
> To get even the legitimate and popular x86 applications you still have to manually browse to websites and download it. You can install whatever you want whether it has a digital signature or not and yes it also includes the plentitude of crapwares and spywares.
It's not as open as Linux, or Android, and about as open as OSX. You can't load unsigned drivers anymore without much work. I have no idea why you'd think Windows is "least closed garden" - unless you've never used any of the others.
> Or maybe some people like a touch OS with their touchscreen laptop and its just MS thinking forward? I don't know what other OS can you recommend that is touch friendly for my Surface pro?
Stockholm syndrome? How can it be "forward looking" to force you to use a touch interface when you don't want to? You want it? fine, use it. I don't. But if I use Win8, I still have to use it. Forward looking? Bullying is the only description I can give it.
> No sure what you mean by this.
Then read skrebbel's post I was replying to. He is under the mistaken assumption that because he was paying for Windows, he had any control over the direction it went in the last 10 years.
> Then read skrebbel's post I was replying to. He is under the mistaken assumption that because he was paying for Windows, he had any control over the direction it went in the last 10 years.
I apologize, I understood the words "less control over" in your post implying that you believed you had "nonzero control" to start with. Can you please explain what you meant (and what words I put into your mouth)?
At least it's more reliable as a platform. Try to compile, let alone run, a program written for Linux 5 years ago on a distribution today. I compile and run 20 year old software, unmodified, on Windows 8, without any problems.
Yes, anything that only uses posix functions is less fragile, obviously. It's the user space libraries: UI, sound, notifications (for those last two, it's not just the API's that change, it's complete subsystems being pulled from under you), ...
Look, I'm not saying there is no Linux software that doesn't keep working, it's the overall time you spend over the lifetime of your software to keep up with updates in its dependencies. I don't see how anyone can reasonably argue that Windows isn't a whole lot better than Linux at that.
(I've been using Linux since 1998, I'm not new to this game)
What this have to do with reliability of windows as a platform.
Reliable platform means, that new versions of OS do not break your old program. Which is true for windows.
Of course, as OS becomes more capable, it's possible to write programs that can't work on less capable older versions. But even then, windows tries to add fallbacks so that most new programs still work on old versions.
I'm doing this on a daily basis with problem. However, in 2003 I had great problem compiling a Win3 program written in 1996 (only 7 at the time, not yet 20 year old today) program to run on Win2000.
The secret to being able to do this properly is to keep a curated development environment that has the old tools/libs in their proper form -- which I suspect is why you don't have a problem (20 years ago you had VC5/VB5 - do you compile the same program with VS2013?).
YMMV, but my experience is that the Microsoft environment is worse than Linux in this regard.
You must have had some amazing luck because my colleagues tried to install some DBs (it was a combination of Oracle 11g Weblogic and Maximo) and had miserable luck. And it was working on Win7.
I think the difference between installing applications that are basically written for Unix (Oracle for example) on Windows and compiling software is a vast chasm.
The parent to you is correct in that you can compile really really really old software on Windows with ease and very few changes. This is not possible on Linux.
Of course, that's because the libraries in fashion change on Linux very quickly and nobody cares about backwards compatibility that much. They say "just grab the latest version!" or "why are you trying to compile such OLD software?!", particularly if written in C or C++. I don't know about Python or scripting language support.
But a rubbish installer written by a company that has much of its UI written in Java (last time I checked years ago) doesn't really compare to the excellent backwards-compatibility of the Windows API and surrounding libraries.
This isn't even an anti-Linux rant; the same problem is found on Mac OSX. That runs into both problems - impossible to run old software (Rosetta support please?!) and impossible to compile it because the system has changed so much.
I meant as a developer platform. Yes it's true that, depending on the way it's implemented, it's common that software can't be installed on the exact versions the vendor tested it on or 'approved' it for. What I meant was that Microsoft bends over backwards to provide compatibility, although I guess I should qualify that by saying 'at the lower levels', i.e. on C/C++ code written not too far away from the OS dll's. Silverlight of course is a higher-level counter-example.
There is nothing wrong with a touch UI, the issue was trying to force the touch UI on all users.
Which funnily enough was done to aid them in creating enough demand for their app store to become a player in the closed garden model. If it had worked I bet Win 9 would have been closed garden by default, with a special edition for enterprises.
That's not true. It's in your interest to benefit from improvements in software quality. (Certain "upgrades" from Microsoft have been anything but that, but we've certainly come a long way since Windows ME.) A product encumbered by technical debt is going to be weaker.
There are certain well-defined, self-contained systems where never changing makes sense - things that will run for decades, like lab instruments and life-critical industrial automation. General purpose computing isn't one of them.
You copied half of my paragraph. I was specifically referring to Microsoft refusing to support DirectX and new Browsers on older operating systems.
The limitation was definitely not technical - Chrome and Firefox supported 2000 and XP years after Microsoft stopped.
> > Your interest is to keep an OS supported.
> That's not true.
That's basically always true (even if you quoted me out of context) - it is always your interest to upgrade at your leisure. Unless you are of the general belief that you should be forced to do things that are considered good for you (e.g. forced physical exercise, forced removal of sugar or salt from dishes, etc)
But it is technical. IE, Chrome, and Firefox are different codebases and what's true of one isn't necessarily true of the others.
Chrome and Firefox are largely self-contained. Being multi-platform, they have to be. It makes sense that they can be modified without touching their underlying operating systems.
You keep calling IE "Browser" but it's more than that - it is (or at least used to be) a core component of Windows, and very tightly coupled with parts of the operating system that have nothing to do with web browsing. (Navigating local files, for one thing.) Consequently, overhauling IE without overhauling Windows is (or at least was) a hairy proposition and Microsoft decided it wasn't worth it.
I don't know about DirectX, but I suspect it's also tightly coupled with the operating system such that it's not technically feasible to make current versions run on differently engineered operating systems.
> it is (or at least used to be) a core component of Windows, and very tightly coupled with parts of the operating system that have nothing to do with web browsing. (Navigating local files, for one thing.) Consequently, overhauling IE without overhauling Windows is (or at least was) a hairy proposition and Microsoft decided it wasn't worth it.
That's the company line, they even stated this in court. It might be true today, but I seriously doubt it -- it was definitely NOT true at the time they stated this in court. It was put into the OS with duct tape, definitely not anything at any "core".
I saw a demo of 98 or ME or XP (don't remember which one - the first one that came with integrated IE4) with the web control disabled; some "web folder" views and "active desktop" did not work but the older win95/2000 "folder view" did. If you did not use ActiveX, you didn't feel anything amiss.
In the default setup, if you browsed a local directory through "iexplore.exe", it would fork "explorer.exe" opening another window unexpectedly, although "explorer.exe" would not fork one for a web view (but folder view->web view->folder view did again). Definitely felt like the work of someone who had no access to the "core" to integrate it properly.
If you believe that NOT supporting a newer Trident engine and IE shell on older OS is anything but a political decision, I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn you might be interested in. Sure, it costs more to support - but it's a rounding error in Microsoft's development budget.
Finally, even if the "core" issue is true, which (as I stated) I have issues with, the architecture lets them easily keep the old "web component" in the core, and only use the newer one from the IE container. The decision is political in every possible way.
Here in 2014, who cares? It, by being on every system, provides considerable benefits for developers and users--as far back as .NET 1.1 I was able to drop a WebBrowser control into a form and get exactly what I wanted.
The idea that a browser shouldn't be integrated into an OS makes no sense to me, and apparently to everybody else shipping an OS anyone cares about. OS X has an integrated webview, too, and you can't pitch Safari out the window.
Except ... I'm not paying Ubuntu for my desktop OS; and I would for my server, except they're taking it where I don't want it to go, so I don't.
And ... if you don't like Ubuntu's Unity (many people don't), Gnome, KDE, Enlightenment and ten other desktop environments are basically an apt-get away.
Remind me, what was the command to get rid of The-UI-formerly-known-as-Metro and use the desktop instead?
Remind me, what was the command to get rid of The-UI-formerly-known-as-Metro and use the desktop instead?
In Windows 8.1 you check Boot To Desktop, in Windows 8 you either have to install a small utility or remember to click the big Desktop button in the top left corner every time you reboot. If you want the old style start menu back there are at least 3 different third party options to chose from.
I used to do it regularly before I settled on my current setup. Never had a problem.
I'm not sure what you did, but all it SHOULD do (and in fact, did, for me) was add another session to the login manager. I didn't remove anything, and I can still choose my desktop environment from the list on every log-in.
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 alignment. They still need to fulfill your need or you won't use their software which means they won't get paid by advertisers. They still don't have your interests at heart, but will not do anything to directly lose you as a 'customer' if they believe there are methods of extracting revenue from you.
Microsoft's main customer base has never been the end user anyway, you were merely collateral to getting them inroads into the lucrative enterprise markets which requires that employees coming into enterprise positions are already familiar with Microsoft's technology.
> 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 see it in the proper light. A business is a for profit organization. It does not mean it does not strive to provide valuable services. Actually, you'll see that when companies actually evolve in a relatively free market (i.e. which is not the case of Windows since it's installed by default on most PCs), companies actually compete to provide better service to their customers in order to maximize their profits. There are many cases where consumers interests and companies interests CAN be aligned.
> 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.
Their interests and our interest may not have been aligned, but at least the user was the customer. In an ad supported model, the advertiser is the customer, the users are the product, and the software is the bait. We've already seen where that gets us.
My take is that Microsoft is shifting its consumer strategy away from expressing core B2B values and toward the you are the product model loved by Wall Street and used by Apple and Google and Facebook and just about everyone else.
It's part of the generational shift and the radical change to ownership and thereby control that is underway. Gates and Ballmer are divesting their shares and that means that the new Microsoft has to make Wall Street analysts happy in a way that a company whose CEO and Chairman are the two largest shareholders doesn't.
The writing was on the wall with Windows 8. It wanted persistent login to Microsoft servers and to produce tailored content via persistent tracking. Whatever doubt I had was gone when Windows 8.1 rolled back my choice of local login without asking and buried the means of changing deeper than before. Topping it off was that 8.1 ignored the fact that the login name I entered as default was the valid local login I had used to start installation.
I've been using MS operating systems since DOS 3.3. The first version of Windows I worked with was 2.0 [only for a customized workflow on an Amiga 2000 with bridgeboard, though]. It's been Windows full time since 3.0 because I've never felt that Microsoft's approach was caveat emptor.
Now I can't say that. I fear they are becoming like everyone else.
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 provide sustenance and influx for their volume-licenses cash cows doesn't serve Microsoft's bottom line either. So even if you pay nothing, your usage of Microsoft's products is very much something Microsoft would prefer to continue.
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%, and was approximately 65% of total Windows Division revenue."
Windows Enterprise licenses are managed separately - even if Wells Fargo orders 12,000 new laptops from Dell, Windows licensing is not factored into the price; WF manages that separately through its enterprise relationship directly with Microsoft.
> 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.
OEM means the hardware manufacturer bought a licence and installed it. The end-user had no choice of OS. You can't say Microsoft had any business with end-users.
I wouldn't fret. Looking at history, MS will probably release several versions of Windows including paid versions. Microsoft's biggest strength and weakness is that they want to cater to everyone at the same time.
Not necessarily. They may be giving away their platform to encourage the ecosystem that surrounds it (to both consumers and developers), which is probably much more valuable than the OS itself.
"Google offers free OSes to computer and phone makers as a way of driving the use of its search engine and countless other web services, and now, Microsoft is at least experimenting with the idea of doing much the same thing. According to the report, its free operating system is known as Windows 8.1 With Bing. As the name implies, the OS is meant to feed the use of Microsoft’s own search engine, as well as other Microsoft cloud services and software applications."
That's not even the start of the problem with Microsoft OSes, from my perspective. I bought a Dell machine this month with great specs and Windows 8.1 on it. I Clonezilla'd the drives with Windows on them and paved over with Mint 16 because (1) it's less painful to maintain and (2) I can script the installation of software I need to develop with. I've done battle with UEFI once and now I have a system I like.
So Microsoft OSes are too expensive even if they were free. And I used MS DOS and Windows for 20 years before moving to Linux. No, something huge would have to happen before I go back, and free is not enough.
What you are describing here is the cost of changing from an OS you know, to one that you don't. Since this cost greatly exceeds the sticker price of windows, or Mac for that matter, it is the real reason why people tend to stick with the OS they already know how to use.
It's one of the reasons why Linux never got much traction on the desktop. Sure it made a great desktop OS for the technorati but Joe Public knows how to do what he wants in Windows, and saving $50 isnt incentive enough for him to change.
As you say, "free is not enough".
Incidentally the exact same thing plays out with regard to apps. Office may have strong Open Source competition, but free is not enough there either to get most people to switch.
This effect is not limited to the OS itself, but extends to the flavor of the OS as well. Despite what the popular press says, windows 8 is not bad, but it is different. Vista was better than you think, but wasa different to XP and so on. Xp was the gold standard for a long time, so it's easy to forget how much people resisted it at first.
And before you get too smug, look at the division in the Linux market right now over Unity.
Here's the thing. The price of the OS is irrelevant. Free is not an advantage. Windows will exist on the desktop for many years to come, and will likely flop on the phone. But price will have nothing to do with either outcome.
It's your dumb fault for installing a beta and expecting it to update cleanly. It's never been that way and I wouldn't be surprised if it was made clear at the download page, as it was with all the Windows 8 betas.
>I can script the installation of software I need to develop with. I've d...
This is a serious problem with Linux'es. Seriously, what user base is Linux optimizing for? Nearly 100% of the people using a computer don't have to ever do such a thing ever.
People use computers to get work done, or get some entertainment. Not play with their guts. Imagine if your TV or Washing Machine, or even you Car required you to have deep understanding of Electronics or mechanical engineering to just get them working.
I'm sure we people who call ourselves hackers wouldn't touch such a thing with a 10 foot pole.
"I can script the installation of software I need to develop with" means he can simply write a script (similar to a windows batch file) that automatically installs whatever software he needs using the package manager. You are not required to do this, and this is simply a convenient method of preparing a freshly installed OS for use. For example, if I install an OS on a new machine, I usually install chrome, openbox, tint2, etc. I have a script that does that for me so that I don't waste time installing every single piece separately. I don't even know how to do anything similar on Windows.
If anything, the way software installation is managed on most linux distros (package managers and software repositories) is superior to the way it's done on Windows today (download setup.exe from god-knows-where and run it, and a constant pain in the ass with updates).
To be fair, you can do this on Windows .. with the enterprise tools. It's just that there's no easy way to find this out and they require a domain controller anyway.
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 with Windows 7/8, not part of a domain or anything - just a new laptop. Care to list the steps needed to get into your favorite state (list YOUR favorite 10 apps you need to install)
I just use the same old .exe that I generate from ninite.com. It takes just one click and I have all my favorite apps running. I just need to install VS2013 and are good to go. It can't be more simple than this.
Just looked at ninite again (after having not done so in years) and was pleasantly surprised - although it's still very pale compared to Debian's 20k strong packages.
But it's definitely a good start.
(It can be simpler than this - it is, on modern Linux)
> 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.
I would use chocolatey nuget http://chocolatey.org. That's how I set up my last machine. Didn't think to a make it a .bat file, but I will next time I build a new machine.
> Care to list the steps needed to get into your favorite state
Well, first you have to figure out how the screen capture API for Windows. Then you have to take screenshots of each screen of the installer program of each application you have to run. Write image recognition code to figure out the location of each button on each tab of each installer screen. Then delve further into the Windows API's to write code to inject mouse movements or keystrokes to make the installations happen.
Oh, and if you're using this with a newer version of Windows that uses a different font, or slightly different styling for buttons, or has different UAC dialogs, you're totally hosed. Ditto if any of the installers releases a new version, you may have to make changes.
This example demonstrates a command line interface's obvious, inherent, even self-evident superiority to any GUI. Why anyone puts up with the GUI at all is beyond me. It took me ten years to figure out how to get anything done in the GUI when Windows 95 was released; before that, I used the command line pretty much exclusively for moving/copying files and the like.
Chocolatey (basically apt for windows) will automatically download and install most apps I need (Browsers, media player, editors and IDEs, languages and compilers, various utilities etc.). Then Steam (installed by chocolatey) will automatically download and install all my games. I then download and install OSGeo4W which in turn will download and install a whole suite of GIS applications that I need. All my interesting files are in dropbox so they show up automatically.
Once that is done there are only a handful of other applications I need to download from respective vendors websites/git repos (Lightroom, Perfect Photo, Anaconda Python, the latest versions of Julia and Leiningen).
Can you script all those common installers that are (a) not an msi, (b) don't have a /SILENT switch or other unattended installation, (c) require license input, or any combination thereof?
I guess you could use AutoHotkey to simulate mouse clicks, or attempt to repackage the software yourself. But when comparing the ability to script installations in general, linux has a major, major advantage.
And I'll bet part of the license will say, "Can't be run in a virtual machine", to prevent people from using it in combination with VirtualBox to run Windows Apps for free.
Because I'd sure as heck do that and replace hundreds of licensing seats worth of RDP as well as old XP VM's.
Why does this article fixate on Google? For the clicks?
We all know that most of Windows won't be free until they've a sure-fire way to make profits on top of that. And the answer lies in iOS and Mavericks more than Google. Give away the OS to build the ecosystem, sure Android also does that. But only Apple's making money at it.
If it goes free, it's going to look a lot more like iOS than Android -- a lot more like Xbox One, in fact, which also gets free updates. Sure, it might look like Office Starter edition, and be ad supported, but for productivity purposes, ads are the enemy and so that model has less chance at success.
Ultimately, Microsoft wants in on this "free-to-play" OS market, and when they do it, you can bet it will be in their interest, and it will exclude businesses and still offer premium add-on packs for home users. Let's not go crazy, this is, after all, Microsoft.
When would they ever release just one SKU of anything?
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.
The worst thing I found with Windows 8. Using any of the metro apps, there was embedded advertising inside of the apps. Upsetting to be advertised to inside of applications running on an O/S that I paid money for.
It's ok though, they fixed it, when I upgraded to Windows 8.1, the upgrade destroyed my ability to run metro style apps at all - I just got some arcane error message when I try to run/launch anything metro related.
As the article mentions, Windows revenues have been important to Microsoft's business for quite some time. It's hard to imagine how positively shareholders would react to this type of business decision.
I miss the Microsoft that was known for making solid products that could have a 5-10 year shelf life. It is sad that Office 2007 works better for me than Office 2010; Windows 7 better than Windows 8.
Their products get better with age. XP SP2 was a totally different beast from XP. Vista was improved a lot post-launch, and so was Windows 7. I still remember when Office 2007 was "buggy and slow" compared to Office 2003, but today no one runs 2003 anymore and 2007 is the reliable standard. Windows 8.1 has improved on Windows 8. So, give it time.
I really doubt this will have any effect on Microsoft revenues from computer retailers like dell, and windows starter editions has always pushed an IAP for an upgraded version.
The only market they loose is the customers who go to a local store to buy windows starter/basic edition. I think that is a pretty small market, but feel free to correct me.
I tend to agree with this. Also, I doubt if big corporations, perhaps locked into multi-year contract, would bother with this free edition. I bought MS Office in a retail outlet but otherwise Windows OS itself has always been prepackaged.
Closing popular services? Massive pervasive privacy invasion?
I wonder how crippled the free version of Windows will be. MS made an ultra cheap version of vista and 7, for example, that was so limited it was almost a joke.
If MS want to keep their market share up, they should just keep selling Windows 7 at a lower price, as that is what people really want. Real computers are never going to disappear because phones and tablets are read only devices for passive consumers and completely unusable for any real work, underpowered, and with tiny screens (sure, it's nice to watch a movie on the train, but when you get home, you're probably going to use either a computer or a TV instead).
This isn't really as big news as it sounds as MS have often heavily subsidized Windows for OEMs abd such like when they've needed to compete in other markets (Eg when XP was initially losing out to Linux on nettops). And they've shown that they're happy to run flagship consumer products at a loss just to raise adoption (Eg the original Xbox).
So it seems to me to be quite typical for then to drop the cost of a product like this when they're struggling to push said product. And who can blame them, it's a fairly standard practice outside of IT as well, and it's not like MS don't have the funds to do run at a loss for several years either (though I expect they'll easily have this cost offset anyway)
My gut feeling is that this will be them porting Windows RT back onto x86_64, similar in a sense to Windows XP Starter Edition, with options to pay for a "full" license that can run Desktop (i.e. not Metro) apps.
I don't think that's the plan, because if they want old XP users to upgrade, that would not be sufficient, since old XP users of course want their old XP apps to keep working.
Looks like google has succeeded in comoditizing their ccompliments, which their competitor (Microsoft) used to be able to make money off. If I were MS I'd be trying to figure out how to launch a free competitor to adwords.
This seems like a clever move: make the OS free, to encourage developers and consumers to adopt it, and profit from the OS's suddenly-flourishing ecosystem rather than the OS itself.
If this were Windows 7, it would actually be a gift worth receiving. Windows 8 is unusable. The lone machine on my local net is reviled and nobody wants to use it. It's slated for an "upgrade" to Ubuntu 12.04.
As an MacOS/Linux user (at home at least) I'll say that this is a welcome decision from Microsoft and that, regardless of the reason for which it was taken, is one that benefits all the consumers.
Could we for once set aside our opinions on MS and agree on that ?
Not even that. The fear of unpatched XP! If they can get all those unlicensed XP users to upgrade, it will be a huge win for everybody.
Microsoft wins because the albatross of XP will be off their PR necks. Every unpatched security hole will still look bad, even if they gave people years of warning.
Users win because (hopefully) they are using a better OS.
That's not going to help. Many Windows users don't upgrade not because they fear the price of Windows 8, but because they can't stand it and prefer XP, as simple as that. The only way MS can actually help them is not by making Windows 8 free (as in beer), but for example by open sourcing XP. They might do that when they'll get really desperate, but I don't think they are there yet.
> That's not going to help. Many Windows users don't upgrade not because they fear the price of Windows 8, but because they can't stand it and prefer XP, as simple as that.
Or they don't want to bother with buying new hardware. A friend of mine is still using her 10-year old laptop with 1GB memory and XP. And it works just fine for her purposes (web browsing, gmail, little office).
Google doesn't compete with them for the desktop really. But desktop Linux distros do. Especially when it comes to gaming. Note that Valve pushes Linux a lot lately with their whole SteamOS effort especially. I think that's a major threat for MS who for a long time enjoyed an unchallenged position as a platform in PC gaming.
Latest Linux gaming renaissance eats at their confidence. For many gamers Windows is not seen as a requirement anymore, and they simply ditch it and start using better systems (especially because Wine became so good lately). While gamers are a minority amongst Windows users, MS still fears that dynamic because it breaks their network effect and creates the same effect in the Linux world.
Well this is ironic. Here is Bill Gates' letter to the Homebrew Club, dated February 3, 1976:
To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?
Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the initial work took only two months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC. Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC. The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.
The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these "users" never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour.
Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?
Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling software. The royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has invested a lot of money in hobby software. We have written 6800 BASIC, and are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very little incentive to make this software available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is theft.
What about the guys who re-sell Altair BASIC, aren't they making money on hobby software? Yes, but those who have been reported to us may lose in the end. They are the ones who give hobbyists a bad name, and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at.
I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up, or has a suggestion or comment. Just write me at 1180 Alvarado SE, #114, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87108. Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software.
Bill Gates
General Partner, Micro-Soft
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48 years later, it turns out that the following response highlighted the answer:
People walk in to buy a laptop, check the difference in price for Laptops with Windows OS and Laptops without them. Often the difference is in the range 7 to 8 thousand rupees. The obvious option is Pirate Windows OS or Ubuntu.
Instead of making it totally free. Microsoft can even charge a reasonable price and I can assure you people will pay it. The problem was never with Microsoft or Windows. The problem was always affordability.
If only Microsoft can make Windows affordable, they can kill all competitors instantly.