Microsoft Experimenting With Free Version Of Windows 8.1

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
Here's a great way to get more people using Windows 8 and Bing, bundle em' up and give it away for free.

Microsoft is currently experimenting with a free version of Windows 8.1 that could boost the number of people using the operating system. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell The Verge that the company is building "Windows 8.1 with Bing," a version that will bundle key Microsoft apps and services.
 
well, they got the desperate thing goin'... I guess that works on some people?
 
Sure, give it away free and once they're hooked, charge them. Worked with crack
 
hmmm free copy means more people having access to windows 8.1 to find more hacks etc.

If anyone says otherwise. Look at the Android OS.

Great Idea, but in some cases might be a bad thing.
 
8.1 from what I'm understanding is going to have a reduced footprint / use less memory. Also it's going to default to the classic start / desktop if the computer doesn't have touch. Is this correct?

Could be a good thing until Windows 9.
 
So, in other words, an ad-supported Windows 8.1 without the ability to remove said ads, but you get a free operating system?
 
I would take a license for free but I don't know if I would ever use it outside of VM testing... and I can already get the evals free.... sooo.... I dunno.
 
So, in other words, an ad-supported Windows 8.1 without the ability to remove said ads, but you get a free operating system?

Ad and app supported view search and apps. But I would suspect that there would be various procurement paths, free, near free and paid versions with more features and a ways to upgrade from the free to paid versions. Microsoft has been working pretty hard on Windows price reduction especially on low cost devices. These Bay Trail devices certainly had to have pretty low Windows licensing costs, especially with Office 2013 thrown in for free. And 8.1 Update supposedly takes the baseline Windows system down to 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB of SSD, there could be some very cheap Windows tablets on the horizon.
 
So, in other words, an ad-supported Windows 8.1 without the ability to remove said ads, but you get a free operating system?

It works for Kindle. You can save a few bucks with the ad supported version.

It would be for a very limited group of people. The very frugal, non-tech people. Those that know better wouldn't be caught dead with that on their PC. We work our best to keep a clean OS without adware.

Might as well install a few toolbars in IE, Coupon Clippers, Desktop Savings, and a few others. You'll probably make and save more money than the OS would cost in the long run.
 
Might be good for mining rigs. Bamt is good, but more sensor readings from windows monitoring software would be good.

Ads are irrelevant in this case. :)
 
I am telling you the solution to all MS problems would have been to have metro be the desktop background.. you know, where you normally would fill it up with static Icons you would have the metro UI.
If installed on a non-touch screen programs would be windowed even if launched from metro, if touch is in use then no windows if launched from the metro desktop.
This is how windows 8 should have been from the start.. metro would still be shoved in everyone's throat like they wanted, but people would still have the start and the windows MS perfected with windows 7
 
And 8.1 Update supposedly takes the baseline Windows system down to 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB of SSD, there could be some very cheap Windows tablets on the horizon.

This scares me. Minimum requirements for an OS usually equal a shitty experience. XP on 64 MB RAM on a K6/2 400 was SLOW. Worked fine at the time when XP was released, but still very slow. Vista on minimum requirement? No need to explain.

Windows 8 - I'd not run it on anything under 2 GB of RAM, minimum. Even for a tablet. I'm worried that companies will come out with some cheap, minimally powered tablets and people will get pissed again that Windows 8 is too slow and can't do anything with it. Just like Vista.

That said - I haven't run Windows 8 on anything under 2 GB. So, real world performance may actually be fine. I don't know. I just don't like the idea of running on absolute minimum OS required hardware.
 
Hell just froze over. Even I'd grab a copy of free Win 8.1. A few tweaks to my host file and some creative firewalling, the ads/bing will be gone and I can bask in the free glow of metro night lights.
 
I'm just wondering who this is targeted toward?

People who buy pre-built computers are just going to use whatever OS their system comes with, and even if it comes with 7, "upgrading" to 8 will likely be too complicated for them. Plus, who would want to upgrade from a full version of 7 to a version of 8 that makes you watch ads?

If someone builds their own system, they likely are already getting their windows OS for "free" and likely wouldn't tolerate ads in their OS anyway.
 
I took advantage for the $30 upgrade from Win7 -- haven't looked back. Would do it again. Free with ads? no thanks...
 
This scares me. Minimum requirements for an OS usually equal a shitty experience. XP on 64 MB RAM on a K6/2 400 was SLOW. Worked fine at the time when XP was released, but still very slow. Vista on minimum requirement? No need to explain.

Windows 8 - I'd not run it on anything under 2 GB of RAM, minimum. Even for a tablet. I'm worried that companies will come out with some cheap, minimally powered tablets and people will get pissed again that Windows 8 is too slow and can't do anything with it. Just like Vista.

That said - I haven't run Windows 8 on anything under 2 GB. So, real world performance may actually be fine. I don't know. I just don't like the idea of running on absolute minimum OS required hardware.

It could be a problem, that said decent Windows tablets at the $150 dollar range could be very compelling
 
Ad and app supported view search and apps. But I would suspect that there would be various procurement paths, free, near free and paid versions with more features and a ways to upgrade from the free to paid versions. Microsoft has been working pretty hard on Windows price reduction especially on low cost devices. These Bay Trail devices certainly had to have pretty low Windows licensing costs, especially with Office 2013 thrown in for free. And 8.1 Update supposedly takes the baseline Windows system down to 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB of SSD, there could be some very cheap Windows tablets on the horizon.

It works for Kindle. You can save a few bucks with the ad supported version.

It would be for a very limited group of people. The very frugal, non-tech people. Those that know better wouldn't be caught dead with that on their PC. We work our best to keep a clean OS without adware.

Might as well install a few toolbars in IE, Coupon Clippers, Desktop Savings, and a few others. You'll probably make and save more money than the OS would cost in the long run.
Well, at the very least, it addresses my biggest complaint of Windows operating systems when it comes to custom built PCs: Their operating systems cost too much, and take up a good portion of the budget when pricing out your own custom computer.

For those that wouldn't mind ad-supported apps and Bing, and aren't the most tech-savvy will go for this.

But, for people like you and I, we'll still be getting the non-ad supported version.

However, I still wish the non-ad supported version would drop at most $50 for both non-Pro and Pro, OEM and non-OEM, upgrade and non-Upgrade copies of Windows operating systems.

$100 to $200 without discounts or sales between retail, OEM, and upgrade copies is just too much. Especially when you consider that you're spending another $100 to $300 for a processor, and another $100 to $600 for a video card. Your $600 budget computer suddenly balloons to nearly $800 because of the operating system.

That really has to change, because that's too much of a premium just to use Windows OS when it's the most widely used consumer (read: non-server) operating system. If you want to get people to use your product more, then price it fairly and accordingly, and affordably.
 
Error: FirefoxInstaller.exe is not an approved application!

edit: er, not an approved metro app
 
So, I'm not a huge fan of win 8, but as long as it doesn't restrict your options to install / use other programs - this could be a good thing for vmware instances. No more nagging activation BS when you're making lots of test boxes. I'd put up with a few ads to not be nagged about licenses...
 
The noise you hear in the background is an anti-trust suit gearing up.
 
I'm supportive of Microsoft giving away Windows 8 for free, not because my opinions about the OS in-particular, but for a business reason of saving face and boosting the global usage numbers and not let it come close to a repeat of Windows Vista in sales and most importantly, market share.

My problem is the precedent that sets forth by using advertising in-grained in the operating system itself. I can assure you it wouldn't prevent piracy and would probably cause more backlash depending on how it plays out in the long run. We all remember how IE ended up from a add-on application to a code that's now tied into the operating system balls deep.
 
It would be for a very limited group of people. The very frugal, non-tech people. Those that know better wouldn't be caught dead with that on their PC. We work our best to keep a clean OS without adware.

You're just joking right? I'd totally go for an ad supported version of Windows 8 for free. I really liked Office 2010 Starter that was ad supported because it works great and the ads aren't intrusive at all. If Microsoft says "Hey, use Bing" and "You hafta see our ads if you want it for free" I'd seriously go with their latest OS on my not netbook and I'm a very technical person.
 
Well, at the very least, it addresses my biggest complaint of Windows operating systems when it comes to custom built PCs: Their operating systems cost too much, and take up a good portion of the budget when pricing out your own custom computer.

Cheaper and free is always better than more expensive, but custom built PCs is a pretty niche market and when you consider what even a middle of the line performance machine costs, the cost of Windows isn't that significant.

$100 to $200 without discounts or sales between retail, OEM, and upgrade copies is just too much. Especially when you consider that you're spending another $100 to $300 for a processor, and another $100 to $600 for a video card. Your $600 budget computer suddenly balloons to nearly $800 because of the operating system.

That really has to change, because that's too much of a premium just to use Windows OS when it's the most widely used consumer (read: non-server) operating system. If you want to get people to use your product more, then price it fairly and accordingly, and affordably.

Again though you're looking at a small market. The average retail PC with Windows doesn't even cost $600. Just looked at Newegg. A Windows 8.1 Pro OEM copy is $139. I could put a Linux distro on it and save that $140, but I have a LOT more than $140 invested in hardware and software that isn't supported on Linux. Until some other desktop OS has the 3rd party support of Windows, there is a price higher than many might like but that the market will bear in the custom desktop PC world for Windows. And I don't see how even a free version of Windows even without ads would all of a sudden balloon the custom PC market.

Heck, even if Windows were free for all PCs, do you think that people would just all of sudden start buying more PCs? Even if Windows 7 was free? Sure Android is "free" but the reason why it grew so quickly was because it was deployed on phones and tablets, not PCs. Android's growth had much more to do with the market it's in than it's cost.
 
I'm supportive of Microsoft giving away Windows 8 for free, not because my opinions about the OS in-particular, but for a business reason of saving face and boosting the global usage numbers and not let it come close to a repeat of Windows Vista in sales and most importantly, market share.

At this point that's probably not a big concern to Microsoft, they are simply trying to compete on cheap devices. We'll soon be entering the wait and see pattern with the release of Windows 9 beta coming in 6 months or less. Indeed if 9 follows the "bad release, good release" pattern, I imagine that 8.x's adoption will practically end regardless of a free version of 8.x.
 
It makes sense for Windows RT - they have a much better chance of keeping people in the garden with that product.
 
An idea that I think may be closer to home of what Microsoft is trying to do is find a way to give Windows away for free and make their money back on secondary services like Office365 and OneDrive.

Give the OS away to increase your foot print and then make a profit on feature services that have reoccurring subscriptions.

OEM's and Vendors are not going to keep spending money on an OS if they don't have to so I think this is a smart move for MS. I just hope they just do something stupid like make Windows free crippled and to use the full features you need pay for them.
 
The same people who argue against ad supported software (like an OS) are a lot of the same people who have previously defended googles data mining because its free. Every search engine is ad supported, and many free apps out there or even websites like pandora have similiar business models where you pay a fee to remove the ads.

Theres nothing negative from this, its not like theyre adding ads to the paid version of the software
 
So Windows with built in malware...err I mean ads..err bing..meh..same thing.

Pass
 
MS is leveraging it's OS market share to take over the "pre-installed crapware" market. This is going to attract regulatory scrutiny.

It's not a bad idea really, especially on low end devices. iOS and Android have minimal costs associated with development and customization, generally making those devices cheaper.

MS needs a version of Windows which doesn't require 32GB minimum storage space. It's an embarrassment how bloated it is for low cost, consumer oriented tablets.
 
MS needs a version of Windows which doesn't require 32GB minimum storage space. It's an embarrassment how bloated it is for low cost, consumer oriented tablets.

Another problem with a one OS for all devices - desktops have a lot more storage than a simple little tablet. iPad's and Android tablets have slim OS's that are limited to the tablet. So, they have very little overheard. Windows is a full desktop OS on a tablet (which is something I like, but the huge disk space can be a real bitch). It's one of those trade-off's I guess. iPad I had problems. It was for consuming content mostly. Windows tablets you can do anything you can do on a desktop for the most part. I like that. Still - I would love a slim <10GB OS install (or <5GB) for tablet use with limited other items that aren't as usable as a desktop. Not sure what they could take out to make it less bloated, but it'd still be nice.
 
MS needs a version of Windows which doesn't require 32GB minimum storage space. It's an embarrassment how bloated it is for low cost, consumer oriented tablets.

The Windows 8.1 Spring Update is supposed to lower the requirements to 1GB Ram, 16GB Storage, down from 2GB Ram, 32GB Storage.
 
MS is leveraging it's OS market share to take over the "pre-installed crapware" market. This is going to attract regulatory scrutiny.

It's not a bad idea really, especially on low end devices. iOS and Android have minimal costs associated with development and customization, generally making those devices cheaper.

MS needs a version of Windows which doesn't require 32GB minimum storage space. It's an embarrassment how bloated it is for low cost, consumer oriented tablets.

Well it looks like they are trying to leverage the size of the os to the intended device. They just aren't doing a very good job of it right now.
 
Back
Top