I don't know what the ratio of corporate upgrades is to personal but I believe they get a more expensive platform, e.g. Windows XP NT which is on a computer owned by a company I consult for. They are also slow to upgrade as while US branch is on Windows 7, UK still has machines on XP.
Whatever reason MS is out to maximize its profits and market share and they have to compete against free OS's and free upgrades.
old Win 7 system.
ted to the Internet.
If Windows 10 is to be given out FREE, then we should be able to go to a co mputer outlet such as Staples or The Source and get a FREE disk with the so ftware and no questions asked. Downloading the software as a service gives way too much control to Microsoft. I wonder if after the FREE offer is over will the purchased version be substantially different than the FREE one. T here has to be a catch somewhere.
I can see a few reasons. One is market share. They want to rule the OS market and this will give them a boost.
The other is a service provider. My guess is they will have some "pay for" options. Want cloud storage? Want certain add-ons? They already have a version of Office that you pay by monthly fee so there may be more of that.
Maybe they really do just want to treat us all to a free lunch. They also want world dominance, but that is a minor point you don't have to bother yourself with.
I never, ever, ever buy from spam callers. Try to keep em on the line as long as possible, so they don't go bother some one else. Must be someone is buying, they keep coming on.
- . Christopher A. Young learn more about Jesus .
I was thinking of trying Linux as the OS for my home computer after I retire and have time to fool around with that sort of thing. Anyone on here use Linux?
Paul
Me thinks this is Much Ado About Nothing. I am running Windows 7 and I don't like it. I hated 95 and 98 was just as bad. 2000 was an improvement but still sucked. I would be running Linux except one program I use, Pro-Engineer, has discontinued Linux support for their product two versions earlier than what I have. So I am pretty much stuck with Windows.
A free upgrade to 10 is like winning first place in a contest and getting an all expense paid, one week vacation to Cleveland, Ohio. Second place is a two week vacation to Cleveland, Ohio.
Apparently Microsoft is feeling the heat.
Yep lots of people.
Real easy to try, and the price is right. Plus some very cool apps. Many of us use Linux only.
I use puppy linux. Way faster and more stable than windows.:-)
ar-1680771504
r old Win 7 system.
ected to the Internet.
computer outlet such as Staples or The Source and get a FREE disk with the software and no questions asked. Downloading the software as a service give s way too much control to Microsoft. I wonder if after the FREE offer is ov er will the purchased version be substantially different than the FREE one. There has to be a catch somewhere.
I guess when you're the one giving out free stuff, you can decide how and where you're going to do it. I haven't bought a CD based software product in years. Just got some antivirus software for example, downloaded it from the manufacturer, entered the activation code. That is the model the world is moving to, especially given the shift in platforms, ie smartphones, tablets, etc. I think it's unreasonable to expect a company to stock retail channels with a free product, that they don't have to give you to begin with. Who's going to pay for that? They don't stock retail with SP1, SP2, etc, ie the other free upgrades they give you. That's how MSFT is apparently treating this. If I was MSFT, I might offer a CD version, sold directly, for some reasonable charge to cover the costs, for people in special circum stances.
|I use puppy linux. Way faster and more stable than windows.:-)
"Way faster"? Is there something you find unusably slow on Windows? I ask because I think speed is vastly overrated, due to a long history of marketing. People even talk about browser speed, and the browser companies encourage it by running tests and trying to beat each other out with page load times. But a slow webpage load is usually due to a slow server, a slow Internet, or a bloated and badly designed webpage. Choice of browser has little to do with it.
Speed hasn't really been an issue since the late 90s when CPUs got up to about 500 MHz, unless you're someone who edits video or giant photos. Then speed is about getting more RAM.
While a Windows PC with a lot of junk installed can be very slow (I've seen XP systems that move like molasses), in general there's no problem with Windows. I'm running XP right now, on a home made box that's nothing fancy. I bought one of the cheapest CPUs about 2 years ago. Yet virtually everything I do is instant, at least as far as my human perception can tell. I don't think that even the super-duperest Linux can beat instant.
Which is not to say I'm against Linux. I just hate to see people spend money needlessly. And Linux is not "free" if it takes new hardware and/or lots of time to set it up. There's also a serious lack of software, despite what some Linux fans will say. (GIMP is still not a very good image editor, after 15+ years in development. WINE is still not a solution, after 15+ years in development and a ridiculous 10-day update cycle.)
I've seen an awfully lot of people throw away perfectly good computers because they started to run a bit slow and the people were told by others that their PC had "got old", or that the OS was somehow "outdated". I have some of those PCs now. I clean them up and save them for people who might need one.
Baloney. Put Windows 8 on a 500Mhz machine and it will be a pig. Not saying you need the latest quad core whatever, but there is a big, noticeable difference in performance between today's 2ghz multicore CPUs and a 500Mhz CPU.
Nope. Try using your system all day, like I do for computer programming. A fast system allows you to work un-interrupted.
Although the network is the bottleneck, some browsers do a better job of getting key parts of the web page in parallel and displaying the page without all the parts present.
Can't agree.
XP does some things instantly, other things much slower. Human reaction time is around 1/10 of a second. As a guideline, I think humans perceive slowdowns of around
1/10 of a second or more.
Nope. Do a dual boot install. No extra hardware required. Getting on the MSFT upgrade cycle WILL cost you money. I don't think Linux takes any more time to set up than a Windows system. It's the other way around.
Wine does some things fine. Personally I don't use or need Wine.
I can get by in GIMP. There's a load of other Linux software which works as well or better than the common Windows equivalents.
Doesn't happen with Linux systems. They don't slow down with age and new OS versions run fine on older hardware.
Yup. 100% linux. I even have my Dad (76 this summer) converted from windows to Ubuntu. He's very happy with it (the windows system had a dozen infections by the time we replaced it).
What M$ gets out of it is usage share. Developers don't develop for an unpopular OS like the Windows Phone or Windows 8. Microsoft has begged for people to write apps for the Windows Store but the store still looks like that mall that went out of business last year.
Enterprise customers will buy Office and so forth but the consumers aren't going to buy a machine that has a limited amount of software available and software developers aren't going to write for machines with a limited number of users. You've got to break the cycle somehow and giving free upgrades is what they hope will do the trick.
Yup, for the last 20 years or so. Ubuntu is very easy to install and plays well. You no longer need to be a geek to get it up and running and except for some specialized applications there is a similar Linux program.
It doesn't require new hardware and the setup takes a couple of hours, for most of which you can go off and groom the cat or something. Yes, there are some specialized applications that are only available on Windows but how many casual users have them installed? Browse the web, do email, LibreOffice, and so forth and Linux has it covered. If you absolutely, positively have to have Quicken and will accept no others, stay with Windows.
Yup. Put AndroidStudio on a box that was fairly well spec'd 5 years ago and you'll wish you hadn't. Or VisualStudio. Or even a straight command line compilation of a non-trivial application.
If you really want to catch up on your naps, try running ESRI Desktop on a
500 mHZ box.
None of that fancy development confuser stuff for me. I'll stick with Emacs and Makefiles.
| It doesn't require new hardware and the setup takes a couple of hours, for | most of which you can go off and groom the cat or something. Yes, there are | some specialized applications that are only available on Windows but how | many casual users have them installed? Browse the web, do email, | LibreOffice, and so forth and Linux has it covered. If you absolutely, | positively have to have Quicken and will accept no others, stay with | Windows. |
As a box with a web browser, yes, Linux might not be bad, but it's far more than a couple of hours to learn an entirely new OS if one really uses a computer beyond web browsing and email.
I wouldn't discourage anyone from experimenting and exploring, but it's misleading to present Linux as a great, simple, Windows alternative. It's a perennially half-finished geek project, maintained by people who have religious devotion to the project but who really don't get the importance of finished software that works properly, with a properly made installer, and with good documentation.
As Dan Espen tellingly said: "I can get by in GIMP." Probably he can. Apparently he doesn't do much with graphics. But that's hardly a convincing sales pitch. I'm not religiously devoted to Linux, so I'm not satisfied with "getting by". The last time I tried GIMP it wouldn't even save files in normal formats. It only saved in GIMP format. Files had to be "exported" to save them in other formats. A separate menu option! Why? Because the Gimpsters are hard-nosed and humorless about trying to convert people to their particular trip.
GIMP/OO/Firefox have been the answer from Linux fans for many years now, when presented with the paucity of Linux software. The problem is that their attitude comes from the angle that one uses Linux first, and figures out how to make it work later. It's Linux as religion when it should be Linux as tool.
And that's not even getting into the other half- finished aspects of Linux. After initially exploring Linux many years ago I went back twice to see how it was going. I thought that if I could get a basic setup going easily then maybe I'd stick around for awhile. Both times I set simple goals: Get the system set up and get a clear, easily usable firewall that would allow me full control over incoming and outgoing processes. Then maybe get something that would allow me to make disk images, so that time I spent setting it all up wouldn't be wasted if it crashed. That would be the basic requirement so that I could plug in the network cable and begin using the OS. That was my aim before even considering whether there might be enough software to do anything. My other basic setup requirement was that I should be able to get that setup done without having to resort to primitive command line operations in a console window and without having to dig through obscure config files in /etc. Both times the experiment was short-lived. One can hardly do anything without needing a console window. That's inexcusable in a post-1995 OS.
Even if Linux had pleasantly surprised me, it's a very long journey to go from being intimately familiar with Windows to feeling similarly comfortable in Linux or any other OS. There are a thousand little details. Just going from XP to Win7 I spent a couple of weeks learning the details of the new OS. There's no such thing as "a couple of hours" to switch OSs.
But I'd agree that if someone just wants a consumer device for web browsing, and they only use webmail, and if they can somehow keep the creepy spying and control of Eric Schmidt and Mark Shuttleworth out of the equation, then some kind of Linux device might not be a bad option.... as long as it's dirt cheap. :)
Obviously you've never worked with a modern Linux distro. Try it sometime. Perhaps GIMP sucks but I've used it about twice. That's not my bag; software development is.
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