Windows will almost certainly not require a subscription. However, certain new AI features might due to server costs; and licensing Windows as a subscription for those features is the only way that makes any sense in an Enterprise. Home users most likely can, and will, use Microsoft Accounts to pay which obviously isn’t an option in a corporate setting.
It could make sense if Windows had a subscription for enterprise, and they offered things like SaaS-level support for your corporate Windows installs (i.e. I think there is probably a version of this that could provide genuine value to both Microsoft and enterprise customers).
Don't think many consumers would stomach the charge, so suspect it would possibly be different on the home side.
They could integrate the Windows subscription into the existing Microsoft 365 subscription, and then slowly lock down Windows so that it becomes more and more difficult to use it without Microsoft 365, similar to how they make it ever more difficult to use Windows without a Microsoft account. And slowly increase pricing for Microsoft 365, of course. And you get the first year free with a new PC. Otherwise Windows degrades to the Starter edition.
Windows seems to become more and more anti-consumer every single day. That being said, I'm not convinced that Microsoft would push things quite so far, considering how easy it's becoming for users to switch to Linux. On the other hand, people were probably saying the same thing when Microsoft started putting ads in the OS, so what do I know?
> That being said, I'm not convinced that Microsoft would push things quite so far, considering how easy it's becoming for users to switch to Linux.
Unfortunately, Microsoft is in a position where they can make it harder for users to switch to Linux, due to their control over SecureBoot: they can mandate that disabling SecureBoot or adding a custom key be forbidden, like they did on ARM (https://softwarefreedom.org/blog/2012/jan/12/microsoft-confi...).
The barrier to switching to Linux is no longer present for anyone with basic IT knowledge, but Windows didn't get its market share by appealing to that demographic.
As long as Linux is not the default installed OS for off-the-shelf computers like Windows currently is, it won't be able to capture the lions' share of Windows' userbase. Unfortunately I don't think any Linux distribution has the commercial/litigation power to stand up to Microsoft on that aspect. Satya won't making heart gestures about Linux anymore the moment he realizes someone is actually coming to eat Microsoft's lunch.
Microsoft COULD go more open, less restrictive, less money grabbing, with Windows, look away while little people get away with piracy of windows, resulting in people installing it on everything everywhere, a huge user base and “success”.
Instead, MS is imposing hardware restrictions, requiring accounts, requiring subscriptions, polluting it with advertising.
As a result Windows will only lessen over time, fewer will install it, people will avoid it, stay in what they’ve got.
This is Microsoft’s genius “strategy” for Windows - squeeze - and make people resentful and disinterested instead of making Windows an exciting “must have”. Who is it at Microsoft makes such decisions?
I’m not running Windows 11 for these reasons and same thing for 12.
Desktop Linux is in my personal opinion unusable compared to Windows and MacOS. I acknowledge there are those who feel otherwise.
Every time I try desktop Linux I get rid of it when it does not even have copy and paste consistently implemented and compatible with Mac/Windows copy paste. This is the absolute most basic minimal thing a desktop needs to implement because it’s what users do every 60 seconds. I’m not pressing three keys to copy, sorry.
Copy and paste was invented at Xerox PARC in the 1970s, and desktop Linux still hasn’t worked it out.
And then there’s the visual and look and feel sense that it was made by Dr Frankenstein. Windows suffers from this too but not like Linux which is awful.
Been feeling the same way for the past 15 years. Desktop Linux has certainly gotten better, but its not even at a Windows XP level of usability and feels remarkably stagnant.
After trying Linux on and off for 20 years, only to go back to Windows after a day or so, I feel it's finally usable enough that I ditched Windows a few months ago after using it for 25 years. Linux has come a long way and I'd argue it's much more usable than XP now.
Hah, Linux zealots downvoting I guess? Do not worry. Acually, I feel the same. Ive been tried serveral Linux desktop distros and always there is something annoying there, pissing me off. Im still on Win2003. For now im buying my time using very very nice Linux distro called AntiX. I run it as VM and browse shitty^Wmainstream webpages from it thro Xserver installed on Win2003. Not bad experience. If only mainstream webpages would not be so bloated. (Eating 2 cores and 3GB RAM).
As for Desktop Linux. I found only AntiX as only usefull distro for now.
It does require a much larger time investment if you have specific needs.
The thing I most like about Linux is that most things, including the GUI, can stay unchanged if you wish so.
Windows and macOS are always moving targets, and while I found that exciting when I was young because new capabilities were leaps and bounds better than what came before, nowadays most changes are aesthetic and tiresome.
Too bothersome to be worth the hassle, for me personally. The only way Linux “wins” on the desktop is if Windows becomes even more bothersome than Linux. Not a positive outlook.
And this is not something a DE can fix, because the main problems are (a) the GUI app ecosystem is too heterogeneous on Linux and (b) laptop hardware-related issues like sleep, screen and camera control, trackpad and other input device drivers, and battery usage. To a lesser extent also peripheral support like printers and scanners.
I don't think it requires a larger time investment. It is really hard to remember how much time you've spent learning windows. Windows is easy not because it is so user friendly, but because you are so used to it.
A modern gnome these days is very user friendly and a lot of what you've learned can be applied there too. Things generally are quite straightforward, more so than on windows, at least on the happy path.
The sad truth is that stakeholders know this perfectly well. But they know they have an important marketshare they can extract money from. They want this money now instead of trickled in through the next 20-50 years from now when they might be dead.
It sucks but it if you think about it that way, it makes sense. Companies die in cashouts all the time.
Hopefully this will finally usher in the year of the linux desktop =P
Well about that, there was a topic on reddit about the state of desktop linux, and honestly it seems linux is reaching a good level of cuteness, ergonomics, stability, features..
Along history i was quite critical of linux ui/ux but for the first time I was actually not so, and it would be unfortunate for MS to miss this data.
So long as you don't need fractional scaling, touchpad gestures, or hibernation. Also you are able install right wifi card. And don't mind your windows not staying in place when you plug/unplug external monitors.
>look away while little people get away with piracy of windows, resulting in people installing it on everything everywhere, a huge user base and “success”
Have you been living under a rock? That's exactly what Microsoft has been doing lately. They're 100% looking away at piracy. I activated my W11 install with a Windows 7 pirated key I found online for free lol.
If these changes can 4x the average amount of money each user earns Microsoft but half their users quit because of them, they still have doubled revenue.
In the short term, sure. Now half their user base again for the next release, and then again for the one after. The less people use it, the less software targets it, and the less people use it.
If this really is their strategy, it's incredibly short sighted. I doubt it is though. These guys have been in the game for a lot longer than most, they're not stupid.
average people are, don't count people who visit HN as average not at all, what I mean by average is most people that use something like games, media production etc
they dont have a choice because windows still has best ecosystem in this respective areas
If Microsoft isn’t wanting to increase their monetization of me after I bought their software why are they 1) inserting ads across all aspects of their OS and products, 2) switching to a subscription based model when one time purchase models were how they became one of the biggest companies in history?
And how is any of this stupid? It makes them more money. Short term? Apple has existed as an alternative since the beginning of Windows 1.0 and has a tiny fraction of the market but a much higher monetization rate. After 40 years and dozens of competitors they still are on top despite hundreds of examples of alleged stupid anti-user behavior. Windows 12 requiring a subscription is only stupid if making money is stupid.
Apple is a very good example of how making user-hostile changes nets you money. Good point.
> Windows 12 requiring a subscription is only stupid if making money is stupid
Making money short-term at the price of making sustainable money long-term is stupid. Microsoft is not Apple, so if this really is their goal, I'm glad I sold my stocks high.
I remember being excited for windows 7. I stayed up late on a school night to grab a beta iso because there was a limited number of downloads. It was an enormous improvement over XP. But I think that's where Microsoft really lost the plot.
They started forcing 7 users to upgrade to 10 without user input or consent. They kept adding on more and more spyware and ads, removing local accounts and any sort of control you have over your machine.
If I went into work tomorrow and found my machine had updated itself to 11, I'd probably just nuke it and install Linux. I'm so tired of these games and the total disrespect from Microsoft. I'll never be excited about windows again. I'll never want to use windows again.
Linux isn't perfect, but at least it respects me and my choices. It will let me turn off updates. It won't reboot itself in the middle of my work to update the calculator app. It won't sideload bloatware like "Xbox game bar" through the security update channels. I have control of my Linux machines, for good or ill. What I do on my machines is my business and I expect the machine to do what I tell it to, even if it's something like `rm -rf /`
Linux may not be as good an operating system as windows is (was), but at least it isn't actively antagonizing. It doesn't try to control me or sell me something, or mine my personal data to sell. And even if all that were the case, I could still build my own Linux system from scratch.
This slow death spiral is really agonizing for everyone in the tech industry. I wish Microsoft would either just die already or get their shit together. I'm tired of the current situation and I want it to be over already, one way or the other
I remember back in the day installing 95, 98, 2000, XP and then 7.
In the earlier days the sentiment was wow this is great and exciting. I looked forward to upgrading and enjoyed the discovery of new features and generally things were better in every upgrade. I was happy to use and recommend Windows for any personal usage.
Nowadays I run 10 Pro (which I bought) because IMO there's no other reasonable Windows choice and end up having to explain predatory Microsoft behavior to friends and family and suggest they avoid Windows unless it's necessary for specific software they run. You'd be surprised at how usable a modern Linux desktop OS is for an older person who doesn't know a lot about computers but only wants to check email and run a browser. The experience here is SO much better since stuff doesn't change under their feet and the OS doesn't try and con you into making bad choices for you as the end user.
Personally I wish I could go native Linux. I've tried a few times over the past 5 years but I always run into audio and video related issues (I tried everything you can reasonably imagine short of buying all new hardware) and certain games still have compatibility issues. Thankfully Steam is doing a great job at moving the ball forward with Linux compatibility in games.
If I could get 95%+ of games to play well on a desktop Linux system and DaVinci Resolve ran flawlessly for A/V editing I would instantly switch and never look back.
You and I seem to have a different recollection of the past :P
95 was only good in its final iteration, 95c. 98 was a bit of a shit show, 98 SE was kinda stable. 2000 had lots of driver problems for about the first year because it was decidedly different. XP and 7 went kinda smooth, I have to admit that.
But no, I've hardly ever been excited. I upgraded when it was time or when I got new hardware, because by the time the new version came out I had finally got rid of most of the problems with the version before that and/or identified annoying hardware/drivers.
Nothing is ever perfect but I don't recall having feelings between OS upgrades back then where I was like "why is the OS trying to shove ads down my throat?" or having things change under my feet without warning or "what's up with these dark patterns to get less technical folks to take an action" such as having you jump through hoops to make a local account.
It was more like, ok cool, install the new version and then mess around with it for a few hours and after a while you generally feel ok about the decision and it felt like an upgrade. I know XP had a huge backlash in how it looked initially and I remember thinking I'd use Windows 2000 until the end of days but XP was really stable and handled a bunch of games without issues which ultimately trumped everything else for me at the time.
Maybe I started with 95c, I don't remember. It was around the end of 1996. You're right in that often times new hardware came with a new OS version but I've had a few OS only upgrades over the years that felt good. The current machine I'm on now ran Windows 7 for years before eventually I was semi-forced into 10.
>As a result Windows will only lessen over time, fewer will install it, people will avoid it, stay in what they’ve got.
People don't install windows, they buy devices with it already on it. So when they stay in what they've got... well, that's whatever their device came with, or whatever it ends up having once the OS updates itself.
The fact that you are avoiding Windows 11 puts you in the 99,9th percentile... for even knowing what version you're running. Everyone else, when asked what version of Windows they're running, says "I don't know... the latest one?"
People praised Apple for doing that. Apple basically impose MacOS subscription via hardware deprecation every 6-7 years. Judge sided with Apple over Epic for the store payment too. Microsoft is basically mimicking Apple from afar with more direct approach of direvt fee charging instead of hiding it in so.e kind of "premium Apple tax". You want they dont do that, then as consumers, trash Apple behavior. Force them to be fully accountable for and open up their OS to multi-platform hardware. You dont do that. You praise Apple. Then domt fault others to immitate that success route of laughing to the banks.
6-7 years is a pretty reasonable amount to get out of a consumer electronic device. Hardware still makes large gains over that period of time and Apple doesn’t brick those old devices , you can still run them for years on out-of-service OS versions.
That’s just not equivalent to a Microsoft subscription fee, which presumably bricks the device as soon as you stop paying. Not to mention that I’m lucky if I get 3 years out of a stock windows machine that has whatever Lenovo surveillance tool running on it.
>6-7 years is a pretty reasonable amount to get out of a consumer electronic device
According to whom? I find it unacceptable. There is nothing stopping a 2016 Mac from running a modern OS (and it indeed runs with latest Windows/Linux).
Fundamentally, I wonder if Microsoft has lost the "spirit" for Windows.
If you said "where do we steer Windows for the next 10 years", I'm not sure there's a great answer, one that would please business people.
The right answer is probably "as a platform, it's on auto-pilot. Focus on preserving customer workflows, encouraging the growth and happiness of power users (who are stickier), and general cleanup/security/tech debt retirement. Above all else, don't give people a reason to think about an alternative." This was their message for years. We won't break your ancient badly-behaved apps. Your muscle memory will work. All those little customizations and weird shareware tools that let you pull more performance out of the system are encouraged. But that's a message to your existing customers, not something that pulls in new ones.
Microsoft has never been particularly good at getting Windows outside of its desktop and x86/x86-64 niches. They lost interest in all the old platforms (Alpha, PowerPC, etc.) decades ago, and then finally came back with an ARM attempt that seems to target a handful of weird machines nobody can actually buy. Their attempts to get away from the desktop paradigm either failed (WinRT, WinPhone), or found a niche and stagnated there (WinCE). TBH, I'd sort of blame Intel/AMD/VIA here in part: there was no useful x86 response in the low-power space, so many appliance-computing markets were just left entirely to MIPS, ARM, and RISC-V. If you're already committed to an entirely different architecture, why bother with the Windows APIs, which may not be as bulletproof as on x86?
By moving stuff like Office to web-based and Electron apps, they undermined the platform value of Windows. If Blink is your actual runtime, then it's much harder to say "Your day-to-day desktop workflow is so much better on Windows."
By constantly moving people's cheese and enshittifying the product, you get people to ask "what do I have to do to get an ad-free experience, or a shell that isn't actively fighting me every step of the way"-- conversations they should never be having, and which provide a bat-signal to draw the Mac and Linux acolytes in.
Eventually, the primary selling point for Windows is support for closed-source software that fits into a narrow sweet spot: too hostile to run well in WINE, too demanding to put in a locked-down-forever VM. That seems like a market that's both getting smaller by the day, and very difficult to grow.
This rent-seeking subscription BS has got to stop. It's just another way of raising the price by forcing everyone to constantly pay money and more money over the lifetime of a product.
this is the same corporation that considers it "fair use" when their LLM copies code from github without obeying the terms of the license so you shouldn't feel guilty at all about pirating windows.
Frankly I'd rather pay a subscription for a quality operating system that meaningfully improves over time then get a free one that feeds me ads, wastes my time, and frustrates me.
I'm just skeptical MS is capable of delivering on a higher quality OS.
> Frankly I'd rather pay a subscription for a quality operating system that meaningfully improves over time then get a free one that feeds me ads, wastes my time, and frustrates me.
This is Windows we're talking about, you will pay for the former and receive the latter.
Here's a seemingly ridiculous but serious/non-rhetorical question: other than staying up to date with more efficient hardware, what feature or capability does Windows 11 have that Windows 98 did not?
OneDrive? BitLocker? ... Cortana?
The difference between the sum of Windows licensing fees you've paid through the years and the cost of the Windows 98 license is the price you've paid to stay updated.
Considering the fact that you cannot use Windows 98 today other than as a historical curiosity, I feel like what we're paying for is actually not software but a sort of annual (or triennial) ransom.
This is just off the top of my head, but let's give it a go.
Security, across all axes you'd care to evaluate. Actually-working multiprocessing, including across big/little architectures. SxS. A graphics subsystem that doesn't torpedo the computer if something goes wrong (and which continues to improve, e.g. DirectStorage). WSL2. WSA. BitLocker. Solid-state TRIM. Multiple desktops/task view. Aero Snap/Peek.
The user-facing bits are emphatically not my favorite, but, even if I spotted you Windows 2000 so that you were on the NT kernel, there's a ton of stuff that's improved even from version to version, let alone over a twenty year gap.
Windows 98 was vastly less stable and secure than its successors. When it crashed you may also get a screwed file system since there was no journaling. It was effectively single user and passwords were kept in a substantially rot13 user readable file.
I have not used windows in fifteen years or so, but already XP was miles ahead of 98.
A real OS underneath. Windows 95/98 was still derived from DOS, not the NT line. NT 3.51, NT 4, and Windows 2000 were pretty good, but there were many complaints at the time that they didn't run 16-bit programs very well. This kept many people on the older product lines.
Windows XP brought the two lines together, but there were many rough spots. Mostly involving the 16-bit subsystem. It was a rocky transition.
By Windows 7, Microsoft pretty much had it right. A solid NT kernel. The Static Driver Verifier to prevent third-party drivers from crashing the kernel. A classifier system at Microsoft to analyze crash dumps and bring similar ones together for the same maintainer, so bugs got fixed. The 16-bit heritage programs were mostly gone. At last, a really good OS from Microsoft everyone could use.
It's been downhill since then.
I used Microsoft's NT line from NT 3.51 through Windows 7, and was doing some development on a Linux machine. When the Windows machine broke down, I realized I didn't need it any more.
NTFS? ActiveDirectory? UEFI? 64-Bit? Directly 11/12? Microsoft Hello (which is local to the is and supports U2f and thus webauthn , just not supported that much sadly)
I’m a Linux/macos person, but I would never say that there were no important things since windows 98. especially since their kernel is/was so different
All that AI and all that great stuff they're doing has a cost. Bill Gates himself wrote software shouldn't be free. And if you look at all the great stuff he's doing in the world today, I'd gladly give him more.
If true, this could be one of the most significant propelling forces to encourage Linux desktop adoption in recent decades. All we need is for OEMs to strike deals with major Linux distributions, and for at least one distribution to hold their nose and make a further dumbed down version of Linux that can be installed and used with zero user configuration like Windows 11 currently is.
The concept doesn't make sense. So if someone stops paying what? They quit sending security updates? No more feature updates isn't a big enough carrot to keep paying for many. No way they'll lock you out of your OS. Dubious reporting.
Dear Windows users, think real hard if you still want to be abused by developer of your OS. Please try out Linux. We have cookies, but you have to make them yourselves.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 166 ms ] threadWindows will almost certainly not require a subscription. However, certain new AI features might due to server costs; and licensing Windows as a subscription for those features is the only way that makes any sense in an Enterprise. Home users most likely can, and will, use Microsoft Accounts to pay which obviously isn’t an option in a corporate setting.
Don't think many consumers would stomach the charge, so suspect it would possibly be different on the home side.
yep. https://www.neowin.net/news/a-new-report-denies-rumors-of-a-...
they know most consumer wouldn't want to pay it but Enterprise and Pro level consumer ???? uuhhh that where the money come from
Problwm is a few legacy windows apps I rely on, plus my large gaming collection.
It didn't have to come to this. Sigh
Unfortunately, Microsoft is in a position where they can make it harder for users to switch to Linux, due to their control over SecureBoot: they can mandate that disabling SecureBoot or adding a custom key be forbidden, like they did on ARM (https://softwarefreedom.org/blog/2012/jan/12/microsoft-confi...).
As long as Linux is not the default installed OS for off-the-shelf computers like Windows currently is, it won't be able to capture the lions' share of Windows' userbase. Unfortunately I don't think any Linux distribution has the commercial/litigation power to stand up to Microsoft on that aspect. Satya won't making heart gestures about Linux anymore the moment he realizes someone is actually coming to eat Microsoft's lunch.
Instead, MS is imposing hardware restrictions, requiring accounts, requiring subscriptions, polluting it with advertising.
As a result Windows will only lessen over time, fewer will install it, people will avoid it, stay in what they’ve got.
This is Microsoft’s genius “strategy” for Windows - squeeze - and make people resentful and disinterested instead of making Windows an exciting “must have”. Who is it at Microsoft makes such decisions?
I’m not running Windows 11 for these reasons and same thing for 12.
Windows 12 will finally push me into Linux.
Every time I try desktop Linux I get rid of it when it does not even have copy and paste consistently implemented and compatible with Mac/Windows copy paste. This is the absolute most basic minimal thing a desktop needs to implement because it’s what users do every 60 seconds. I’m not pressing three keys to copy, sorry.
Copy and paste was invented at Xerox PARC in the 1970s, and desktop Linux still hasn’t worked it out.
And then there’s the visual and look and feel sense that it was made by Dr Frankenstein. Windows suffers from this too but not like Linux which is awful.
As for Desktop Linux. I found only AntiX as only usefull distro for now.
It does require a much larger time investment if you have specific needs.
The thing I most like about Linux is that most things, including the GUI, can stay unchanged if you wish so.
Windows and macOS are always moving targets, and while I found that exciting when I was young because new capabilities were leaps and bounds better than what came before, nowadays most changes are aesthetic and tiresome.
And this is not something a DE can fix, because the main problems are (a) the GUI app ecosystem is too heterogeneous on Linux and (b) laptop hardware-related issues like sleep, screen and camera control, trackpad and other input device drivers, and battery usage. To a lesser extent also peripheral support like printers and scanners.
A modern gnome these days is very user friendly and a lot of what you've learned can be applied there too. Things generally are quite straightforward, more so than on windows, at least on the happy path.
Not sure what you mean? In most app you can copy-paste with C-C C-V as on windows. Am I missing something?
This isn’t an issue in Mac because you use the Cmd key instead of Ctrl for copy, so there is no overlap
It sucks but it if you think about it that way, it makes sense. Companies die in cashouts all the time.
Hopefully this will finally usher in the year of the linux desktop =P
Along history i was quite critical of linux ui/ux but for the first time I was actually not so, and it would be unfortunate for MS to miss this data.
So long as you don't need fractional scaling, touchpad gestures, or hibernation. Also you are able install right wifi card. And don't mind your windows not staying in place when you plug/unplug external monitors.
Did you mean driver for the card?
> And don't mind your windows not staying in place when you plug/unplug external monitors.
Using Debian with GNOME and that does not seem to be a problem with docking stations or direct HDMI connected monitors for quite a long time.
Have you been living under a rock? That's exactly what Microsoft has been doing lately. They're 100% looking away at piracy. I activated my W11 install with a Windows 7 pirated key I found online for free lol.
If this really is their strategy, it's incredibly short sighted. I doubt it is though. These guys have been in the game for a lot longer than most, they're not stupid.
average people are, don't count people who visit HN as average not at all, what I mean by average is most people that use something like games, media production etc
they dont have a choice because windows still has best ecosystem in this respective areas
And how is any of this stupid? It makes them more money. Short term? Apple has existed as an alternative since the beginning of Windows 1.0 and has a tiny fraction of the market but a much higher monetization rate. After 40 years and dozens of competitors they still are on top despite hundreds of examples of alleged stupid anti-user behavior. Windows 12 requiring a subscription is only stupid if making money is stupid.
> Windows 12 requiring a subscription is only stupid if making money is stupid
Making money short-term at the price of making sustainable money long-term is stupid. Microsoft is not Apple, so if this really is their goal, I'm glad I sold my stocks high.
It would require a massive cultural shift on Microsoft part to make these changes and I don't think they plan on doing it. Quite the opposite in fact.
We will see more software like MS Teams which will suck but will be good enough to capture the market.
They started forcing 7 users to upgrade to 10 without user input or consent. They kept adding on more and more spyware and ads, removing local accounts and any sort of control you have over your machine.
If I went into work tomorrow and found my machine had updated itself to 11, I'd probably just nuke it and install Linux. I'm so tired of these games and the total disrespect from Microsoft. I'll never be excited about windows again. I'll never want to use windows again.
Linux isn't perfect, but at least it respects me and my choices. It will let me turn off updates. It won't reboot itself in the middle of my work to update the calculator app. It won't sideload bloatware like "Xbox game bar" through the security update channels. I have control of my Linux machines, for good or ill. What I do on my machines is my business and I expect the machine to do what I tell it to, even if it's something like `rm -rf /`
Linux may not be as good an operating system as windows is (was), but at least it isn't actively antagonizing. It doesn't try to control me or sell me something, or mine my personal data to sell. And even if all that were the case, I could still build my own Linux system from scratch.
This slow death spiral is really agonizing for everyone in the tech industry. I wish Microsoft would either just die already or get their shit together. I'm tired of the current situation and I want it to be over already, one way or the other
https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts/r...
They never did that. But let's not let the truth get in the way of a good clickbaity FUD rant.
This is unity level antics.
I remember back in the day installing 95, 98, 2000, XP and then 7.
In the earlier days the sentiment was wow this is great and exciting. I looked forward to upgrading and enjoyed the discovery of new features and generally things were better in every upgrade. I was happy to use and recommend Windows for any personal usage.
Nowadays I run 10 Pro (which I bought) because IMO there's no other reasonable Windows choice and end up having to explain predatory Microsoft behavior to friends and family and suggest they avoid Windows unless it's necessary for specific software they run. You'd be surprised at how usable a modern Linux desktop OS is for an older person who doesn't know a lot about computers but only wants to check email and run a browser. The experience here is SO much better since stuff doesn't change under their feet and the OS doesn't try and con you into making bad choices for you as the end user.
Personally I wish I could go native Linux. I've tried a few times over the past 5 years but I always run into audio and video related issues (I tried everything you can reasonably imagine short of buying all new hardware) and certain games still have compatibility issues. Thankfully Steam is doing a great job at moving the ball forward with Linux compatibility in games.
If I could get 95%+ of games to play well on a desktop Linux system and DaVinci Resolve ran flawlessly for A/V editing I would instantly switch and never look back.
95 was only good in its final iteration, 95c. 98 was a bit of a shit show, 98 SE was kinda stable. 2000 had lots of driver problems for about the first year because it was decidedly different. XP and 7 went kinda smooth, I have to admit that.
But no, I've hardly ever been excited. I upgraded when it was time or when I got new hardware, because by the time the new version came out I had finally got rid of most of the problems with the version before that and/or identified annoying hardware/drivers.
It was more like, ok cool, install the new version and then mess around with it for a few hours and after a while you generally feel ok about the decision and it felt like an upgrade. I know XP had a huge backlash in how it looked initially and I remember thinking I'd use Windows 2000 until the end of days but XP was really stable and handled a bunch of games without issues which ultimately trumped everything else for me at the time.
Maybe I started with 95c, I don't remember. It was around the end of 1996. You're right in that often times new hardware came with a new OS version but I've had a few OS only upgrades over the years that felt good. The current machine I'm on now ran Windows 7 for years before eventually I was semi-forced into 10.
People don't install windows, they buy devices with it already on it. So when they stay in what they've got... well, that's whatever their device came with, or whatever it ends up having once the OS updates itself.
The fact that you are avoiding Windows 11 puts you in the 99,9th percentile... for even knowing what version you're running. Everyone else, when asked what version of Windows they're running, says "I don't know... the latest one?"
They care about extracting every drop imaginable from locked-in enterprises.
That’s just not equivalent to a Microsoft subscription fee, which presumably bricks the device as soon as you stop paying. Not to mention that I’m lucky if I get 3 years out of a stock windows machine that has whatever Lenovo surveillance tool running on it.
According to whom? I find it unacceptable. There is nothing stopping a 2016 Mac from running a modern OS (and it indeed runs with latest Windows/Linux).
If you said "where do we steer Windows for the next 10 years", I'm not sure there's a great answer, one that would please business people.
The right answer is probably "as a platform, it's on auto-pilot. Focus on preserving customer workflows, encouraging the growth and happiness of power users (who are stickier), and general cleanup/security/tech debt retirement. Above all else, don't give people a reason to think about an alternative." This was their message for years. We won't break your ancient badly-behaved apps. Your muscle memory will work. All those little customizations and weird shareware tools that let you pull more performance out of the system are encouraged. But that's a message to your existing customers, not something that pulls in new ones.
Microsoft has never been particularly good at getting Windows outside of its desktop and x86/x86-64 niches. They lost interest in all the old platforms (Alpha, PowerPC, etc.) decades ago, and then finally came back with an ARM attempt that seems to target a handful of weird machines nobody can actually buy. Their attempts to get away from the desktop paradigm either failed (WinRT, WinPhone), or found a niche and stagnated there (WinCE). TBH, I'd sort of blame Intel/AMD/VIA here in part: there was no useful x86 response in the low-power space, so many appliance-computing markets were just left entirely to MIPS, ARM, and RISC-V. If you're already committed to an entirely different architecture, why bother with the Windows APIs, which may not be as bulletproof as on x86?
By moving stuff like Office to web-based and Electron apps, they undermined the platform value of Windows. If Blink is your actual runtime, then it's much harder to say "Your day-to-day desktop workflow is so much better on Windows."
By constantly moving people's cheese and enshittifying the product, you get people to ask "what do I have to do to get an ad-free experience, or a shell that isn't actively fighting me every step of the way"-- conversations they should never be having, and which provide a bat-signal to draw the Mac and Linux acolytes in.
Eventually, the primary selling point for Windows is support for closed-source software that fits into a narrow sweet spot: too hostile to run well in WINE, too demanding to put in a locked-down-forever VM. That seems like a market that's both getting smaller by the day, and very difficult to grow.
I'm just skeptical MS is capable of delivering on a higher quality OS.
This is Windows we're talking about, you will pay for the former and receive the latter.
but lol
OneDrive? BitLocker? ... Cortana?
The difference between the sum of Windows licensing fees you've paid through the years and the cost of the Windows 98 license is the price you've paid to stay updated.
Considering the fact that you cannot use Windows 98 today other than as a historical curiosity, I feel like what we're paying for is actually not software but a sort of annual (or triennial) ransom.
Security, across all axes you'd care to evaluate. Actually-working multiprocessing, including across big/little architectures. SxS. A graphics subsystem that doesn't torpedo the computer if something goes wrong (and which continues to improve, e.g. DirectStorage). WSL2. WSA. BitLocker. Solid-state TRIM. Multiple desktops/task view. Aero Snap/Peek.
The user-facing bits are emphatically not my favorite, but, even if I spotted you Windows 2000 so that you were on the NT kernel, there's a ton of stuff that's improved even from version to version, let alone over a twenty year gap.
I have not used windows in fifteen years or so, but already XP was miles ahead of 98.
Windows XP brought the two lines together, but there were many rough spots. Mostly involving the 16-bit subsystem. It was a rocky transition.
By Windows 7, Microsoft pretty much had it right. A solid NT kernel. The Static Driver Verifier to prevent third-party drivers from crashing the kernel. A classifier system at Microsoft to analyze crash dumps and bring similar ones together for the same maintainer, so bugs got fixed. The 16-bit heritage programs were mostly gone. At last, a really good OS from Microsoft everyone could use.
It's been downhill since then.
I used Microsoft's NT line from NT 3.51 through Windows 7, and was doing some development on a Linux machine. When the Windows machine broke down, I realized I didn't need it any more.
I’m a Linux/macos person, but I would never say that there were no important things since windows 98. especially since their kernel is/was so different
https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-might-want-to-be-makin...
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