Why The Market For Paid-For OS Upgrades No Longer Exists

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Are paid OS upgrades a thing of the past? Considering Windows has been outselling every other OS on the planet (free or not) forever, I don't see any incentive for Microsoft to stop charging for its operating system.

There is no longer a market for paid-for upgrades for an OS. In fact, not only is there no longer a market, it's actually bad business for the OS vendors to increase the upgrade friction by charging for upgrades. It's far more advantageous for Microsoft to be competitive with the other OSs, which offer free upgrades, to have a predictable, homogeneous platform for developers, and be able to roll out the latest security innovations as broadly as possible.
 
I don't see Microsoft stopping charging a fee for windows (initial OEM).

Subscription, or paid updates though. That is not happening, just don't see it.

Might see the death of retail licensing though.

In other words, you pay the up front cost of windows. OEM license tied to your mobo, you get free upgrades for the life of your computer (mobo). Next windows build, you'll have to pay for another OEM license.
 
Steve said:
It's far more advantageous for Microsoft to be competitive with the other OSs, which offer free upgrades, to have a predictable, homogeneous platform for developers, and be able to roll out the latest security innovations as broadly as possible.[/I]
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Agreed.

They can make money on new sales, with new systems, but if they want people to keep their systems current, then they need to allow free downloaded upgrades.
Most people don't buy a new OS any more (People who build their own systems are an exception).
They need to lower the cost of the new OS to something cheaper, like what the OEM market pays.
Then they no longer need to sell separate upgrades, just a single sku for home and another for Pro.
 
I think most people do not actually upgrade their OS unless they buy a new computer.
 
I don't see where this comes from. I paid over $600 to install full versions of Win7 for three systems in my house just not that many years ago. Win8 was essentially an update pushing the mobile platform and the stupidity of thinking that people wanted to use touchscreens for everything all the time, shit there were idiots heralding the end of the mouse and keyboard. Then Win10 came along and they dropped the touchscreen stupidity but they are still trying to push the App/Tiled look while still giving the rest of us a basic desktop. Not too bad but they are still being pretty pushy with some of their bullshit like Cortana and what's it called? The new browser I hate?

You know they did this exact same kind of bullshit with the X-Box, it would herald the death of PC Gaming yada yada the PC was going away, the future is Tablet's/Consoles/Smart Phones/Bullshit!

Every time MS thinks they have recreated the future of computing they are proven wrong. Perhaps they will get it right some day but they haven't yet as far as I can see. It doesn't matter how useful all these other devices become, in the end, non of them actually do more then augment the PC for what a PC is really good at.
 
sboucher said:
I don't see Microsoft stopping charging a fee for windows (initial OEM).

Subscription, or paid updates though. That is not happening, just don't see it.

Might see the death of retail licensing though.

In other words, you pay the up front cost of windows. OEM license tied to your mobo, you get free upgrades for the life of your computer (mobo). Next windows build, you'll have to pay for another OEM license.
Click to expand...

That'd be mobo tied to a PC you buy, right? Some of the enthusiast crowd won't want to buy an OEM license to a standalone motherboard automatically and neither will the manufacturers of those boards. There's way more you could be using that board for than just Windows.
 
sboucher said:
OEM license tied to your mobo, you get free upgrades for the life of your computer (mobo). Next windows build, you'll have to pay for another OEM license.
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So, every time a motherboard fails, or you upgrade the motherboard, you have to pay for another copy of the OS? Umm, just NO.
 
Where's the money going to come from? The Windows app store nobody wants or uses? Ads in the OS? Selling user data? Are they planning on turning into Apple and eliminating non-Microsoft hardware? This strategy makes no sense.
 
The incentive to release free updates is pretty clear to me:

Look at all the people still running XP, Win7, even Win8.

Even though 10 is "free" people still aren't flocking to it.

It's a nightmare for support, when you have to provide support so many different versions of your OS.

And it's horrible for PR when another hack hits your OS, and especially painful when you know that particular vulnerability was patched out in the latest OS because of some other security upgrade.

So there is a good point that Windows is still the juggernaut, paid releases or not. But it could end up savings MS money

Now, I would also say, people would be more inclined to upgrade if the upgrades weren't crap. But even "Free" isn't enough to get a lot of people to move.
 
The article didn't mention one major shift. Not too long ago, the end user was the customer and as such reasonably expected to pay something for the product. Now the end user or at least tracking data generated by the end user, is the product. The real customers are the companies willing to pay for that data. So it is in the best financial interest of the OS companies to get their data generating OS in use by as many end users as possible so as to maximize the data harvest for sale. Making the OS free encourages the end users into quickly adopting the OS with the latest data mining features.
 
vashstampede said:
Microsoft is the only OS that's charging. All the other OS's are free.
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No they are not.

OSX isn't free, RedHat isn't free. In fact, most any OS worthy of running a business on is not free. And I wouldn't run any free OS on a business machine anyway. If I am not paying for it I have no recourse when it's screwed up and costs me money, no way to pressure a vendor.
 
Brian_B said:
The incentive to release free updates is pretty clear to me:

Look at all the people still running XP, Win7, even Win8.

Even though 10 is "free" people still aren't flocking to it.

It's a nightmare for support, when you have to provide support so many different versions of your OS.

And it's horrible for PR when another hack hits your OS, and especially painful when you know that particular vulnerability was patched out in the latest OS because of some other security upgrade.

So there is a good point that Windows is still the juggernaut, paid releases or not. But it could end up savings MS money

Now, I would also say, people would be more inclined to upgrade if the upgrades weren't crap. But even "Free" isn't enough to get a lot of people to move.
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You are right, but this is the part that Microsoft failed to consider when they decided to go with their "sell a new version of the same shit" strategy they made a fortune on all these years. This is their bed they made and now they don't like how it smells.
 
Brian_B said:
Even though 10 is "free" people still aren't flocking to it.
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Not really sure what the expectation is that some have with 10. The only other OS that comes close to its adoption rate is Windows 7. And sure, Windows 7 wasn't a free upgrade but the new PC market was significantly healthier than it is today and the overall number of devices was probably quite a bit smaller. The daily track from GS StatCounter had Windows 10 at 16.63%. And I get that different trackers have different numbers, but at the stage of the game, without widespread business adoption, I just don't know how much faster this number could go up. I think the idea that if Windows 10 had "no spyware" or "wasn't a virus" the numbers would be significantly higher is dubious because there's no way this number could be a lot higher without widespread business adoption.
 
I think you have a fair assessment of things heatlessun. I'm pretty sure the Army is working on Win10 now trying to prepare it for adoption. They'll do what they have always done, butcher it into just what they want to keep and leave the rest in the bit bucket.
 
lcpiper said:
No they are not.

OSX isn't free, RedHat isn't free. In fact, most any OS worthy of running a business on is not free. And I wouldn't run any free OS on a business machine anyway. If I am not paying for it I have no recourse when it's screwed up and costs me money, no way to pressure a vendor.
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Osx is free cause you can only get it on apple products, just like iOS. Redhat is centos is Fedora. Redhat is free but not support. If you run servers you want support.
 
vashstampede said:
Osx is free cause you can only get it on apple products, just like iOS. Redhat is centos is Fedora. Redhat is free but not support. If you run servers you want support.
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You are correct about support being what costs the cash with Redhat. But then again, I think my statements were focused on the business angle don't you?
 
heatlesssun said:
The daily track from GS StatCounter had Windows 10 at 16.63%.
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Is this the number of people who actively adopted it, or does it include all those who just didn't know how to stop it from installing itself on an older machine that used to have a different version of windows? And how many who wound up with it because it screwed up their old computer so they wound up buying a new one?
 
nightfly said:
Is this the number of people who actively adopted it, or does it include all those who just didn't know how to stop it from installing itself on an older machine that used to have a different version of windows? And how many who wound up with it because it screwed up their old computer so they wound up buying a new one?
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I think the large majority of people simply don't care. They see the free upgrade message, press the button and vast majority of the time it just works and that's that. I'm not saying the process is perfect or things that you mention can't or don't happen, I just think it's the exception and not the rule.
 
ShagnWagn said:
So, every time a motherboard fails, or you upgrade the motherboard, you have to pay for another copy of the OS? Umm, just NO.
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Exactly. This change is pushing me to go fully Linux the next time I build and there's no drivers for Windows 7. I'll just run what remaining Windows only apps I have in a VM if I have to.
 
lcpiper said:
Bullshit.

http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MC573Z/A/mac-os-x-106-snow-leopard

You can buy the OS standalone and not need an Apple product to justify the purchase.
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You are both *kind of* right.

The last OSX version you could buy as a retail disc is Lion, which is pretty old and useless at this point (if you want to do anything but run a server of some kind...and even then SMB was particularly bad on Lion).

Now you DO NOT have to buy an Apple computer in order to buy any of the OSX versions after that, BUT you do have to purchase it from a valid Apple computer. So you can use another Apple computer to purchase the OSX upgrade through the App store. But if you try to do it on an older Mac, the purchase will fail.

But considering there is zero validation done outside of that, you can just as easily download it through "unofficial" channels which is what the hackintosh people usually do. No serial numbers or anything. Everyone downloads the exact same file.
 
vashstampede said:
Osx is free cause you can only get it on apple products, just like iOS. Redhat is centos is Fedora. Redhat is free but not support. If you run servers you want support.
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But I literally cannot install anything on our Redhat computers at work, because we do not have a valid RHN (Redhat Hat Network) subscription. And these are 15 year old systems, so the work arounds don't work because the beta repositories are long gone.

So ya, we didn't pay for it, but it's frozen in time unless you want to handle all the dependencies yourself which is too risky on production machines.

Not happy with Red Hat.
 
I think the days of charging for consumer level operating systems is over. Support sales for commercial installations are a different animal.

Microsoft is deathly afraid of a generation that is growing up right now without their OS for the most part.

As someone with kids from 12-24 years old I can see why MS would be concerned. None of my kids have bought a PC... but my older boys will dish out for a latest greatest smartphone every 6 months it seems. My 12 year old daughter knows how to pirate software and hack the heck out of her android device, but ask her what a windows registry is, or watching her hunt for the control panel on our desktop is painful.

I am thinking MS is scared that google is sitting in the wings just waiting... for the day when they can convince most of the larger game companies to develop for their own OS. Sure chromebooks might be a joke to anyone that would be on this forum... 10 years from now though when the majority of people making computer purchases are my children MS is in real trouble. To them Windows is what runs on the stupid slow annoying computers at school, and they could really give a toss about it... 95% of their computing lives is spent on their arm powered linux kernal powered phones.
 
ChadD said:
10 years from now though when the majority of people making computer purchases are my children MS is in real trouble. To them Windows is what runs on the stupid slow annoying computers at school, and they could really give a toss about it... 95% of their computing lives is spent on their arm powered linux kernal powered phones.
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And this is why Microsoft has much of what it's doing with Windows 10, not for it's current customers but as you say for people like your children. Tablets, touch, apps, 2 in 1s, cloud services integration, these things aren't really for the current generation of PC users but the next ones.
 
vashstampede said:
Osx is free cause you can only get it on apple products, just like iOS. Redhat is centos is Fedora. Redhat is free but not support. If you run servers you want support.
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No OSX isn't free. It was paid for in part of the $1400 you paid for the $500 worth of laptop parts.

If MS was the only one selling Windows machines then they would still be selling Windows but with a laptop too.

Its al part of the package.
 
midnightfrolic said:
I do not see MS giving away their OS for free indefinitely. They still need to recoup R&D costs
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That's why we are seeing all the data collection in this version of windows. MS is going to have to sell itself as an advertising/metric collection platform in the future. They have been trying really hard to catch up with the google guys with the voice assistant searching their engine ect.

The money is in the data.. advertising is the industry that will drive the OS for the next while. The real fight for $ will be providing the best metrics and making value propositions for those guys through searches powered from the OS. As the network TV industry declines that market for advertising on OS search results is going to explode.

MS can give the OS away for free and make 10x more on that end then they ever did selling people an OS once every few years. They can also still sell high end licences for the commercial sector. It won't be "free" for everyone... and for the rest of us what we are really doing is selling MS our search habits, which will allow them to sell better targeted ads.
 
I'd gladly pay $99 for a true Professional edition of Windows 10 with all the telemetry and forced update crap removed or at least full control of it.

Alas, they slept at the wheel as the mobile revolution passed them by, and they'll always be irrelevant there no matter how much they antagonize longtime windows users with mobile crap shoehorned into a "desktop" OS.
 
midnightfrolic said:
I do not see MS giving away their OS for free indefinitely. They still need to recoup R&D costs
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Microsoft never stopped selling Windows to OEMs. Lenovo, Dell, HP, etc, still pay for every Windows license they buy. Of course it's a few pennies, but they do sell a lot of them.

Microsoft never stopped selling Windows to Enterprise. Windows 10 Enterprise isn't a free upgrade, and stuff like Software Assurance isn't cheap.

Microsoft never stopped selling Windows to retail. You can go on Newegg right now and buy Windows 10 as a retail product. If you're doing a new build, and you don't have a Win7/8/8.1 key laying around, this is how you get Windows 10 on that device.
 
daglesj said:
No OSX isn't free. It was paid for in part of the $1400 you paid for the $500 worth of laptop parts.
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I've been thinking about getting a good quality aluminum laptop with a great screen and a solid state drive. Can you point me to the $500 Windows laptops?
 
DPI said:
Alas, they slept at the wheel as the mobile revolution passed them by, and they'll always be irrelevant there no matter how much they antagonize longtime windows users with mobile crap shoehorned into a "desktop" OS.
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Phones sure, but tablets and now 2 in 1s, they are the fastest growing category of PC. Indeed they are the ONLY growing category of PC. Without the hybrid UI Microsoft would have a bigger problem now than antagonizing those who don't like the UI on the desktop, which I think has been greatly mitigated with Windows 10. Of course there are those that think Windows 8.1 was better on tablets, I've seen people make that argument here. I agree with some of it but then I hear people make statements that don't make a sense in my experience. In any case, 2 in 1s are projected to be a very significant piece of new Windows device sales in the next few years and are projected to be about 10% of the PC market this year.
 
westrock2000 said:
I've been thinking about getting a good quality aluminum laptop with a great screen and a solid state drive. Can you point me to the $500 Windows laptops?
Click to expand...

PC folks, especially in forums like this, often only see performance and specs and anything else that might as cost to a device is gouging. The Surface line takes a lot of heat for its price, especially the Surface Book. I find the Surface Book to be on the best constructed devices I've ever touched. Devices like this simply don't go for $500.
 
heatlesssun said:
PC folks, especially in forums like this, often only see performance and specs and anything else that might as cost to a device is gouging. The Surface line takes a lot of heat for its price, especially the Surface Book. I find the Surface Book to be on the best constructed devices I've ever touched. Devices like this simply don't go for $500.
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Performance and specs are key. Everything else is secondary to me. I always go for the best specs for the price. Everything else only comes into factor when there are multiple products in the same price range with similar specs.
 
westrock2000 said:
I've been thinking about getting a good quality aluminum laptop with a great screen and a solid state drive. Can you point me to the $500 Windows laptops?
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What I was saying is the Macbook Pro is $500 worth of parts that sells for $1300.

The Windows equivalent of $500 worth of parts will probably sell for much less.

Oh I forgot to add on the three years Applecare...
 
lcpiper said:
No they are not.

OSX isn't free, RedHat isn't free. In fact, most any OS worthy of running a business on is not free. And I wouldn't run any free OS on a business machine anyway. If I am not paying for it I have no recourse when it's screwed up and costs me money, no way to pressure a vendor.
Click to expand...

You go try to pressure MS to do something.

Most of our servers here run CentOS. We have some Red Hat, We have some windows servers and a number of solaris servers. We have a pretty large site license for windows desktop stuff, and we are becoming an office 365 shop for email etc.

MS doesn't want to hear shit form us other than what we want to by form them and pricing negotiations. And that's with north of 20,000 desktop licenses.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
Where's the money going to come from? The Windows app store nobody wants or uses? Ads in the OS? Selling user data? Are they planning on turning into Apple and eliminating non-Microsoft hardware? This strategy makes no sense.
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They can give away OS updates to retail home users without much issue I suspect.

The reality is that demographic effectively paid $50 via the OEM to slap windows on there. That person never buys an update. When PCs were increasing performance rapidly, that might be $15-25 a year from that market. Now it is probably closer to $10 annually. That won't go away because they still replace their computer with a new one every so often, and the OEMs pay for that OEM license. Going the free windows 10 route, they get to get that $50 at whatever interval, PLUS sell their user data, PLUS leverage some users into the office 365 cloud. For just home, that is $24-72 per annum from users who buy in. Note if those users did home version of office and the OS once every three years when they refreshed, they'd make $150, in this plan they make $74- 266 off of that user by "giving away" the OS and a copy of office with o365. They may lose some money, but it's a lot less than you think.

For business, You still pay for the server OS like you did, and for updates, like you did. O365 and the servers infect your organization by need ing an active directory infrastructure, so more money, Yeah, the desktop OS may be "free updates", but they are paying for the OEM copy of the OS in most instances, and are keeping the hardware 5-7 years these days. Most site license agreement will radically discount desktop OS costs to get you to get everyone a license to connect with the server infrastructure anyway. Once again, free is relative.

By going free updates, they potentially keep their OS in people's faces. Which gets their office apps and their cloud in people's faces. As for their cloud offering, If you were paying for say dropbox and the ability to have mail available at your business's domain, their o365 pricing for small shops is pretty attractive if it does both, and likely has better spam filtering and gets you a copy of office.
 
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