Windows 10

[MN Mike]

Got this in a email last nigth.

[aanderud]

I'm happy that they're offering the upgrade, but I'm skeptical of how many will actually be able to take advantage of it. The problem I see happening is that a bunch of computers that are running windows 7 today won't necessarily have drivers for windows 10. Even if drivers exist for all of one's devices, they won't necessarily be easy to find or install (easy enough for the average computer user to do). That's already the case with windows 8....

Apple has been offering upgrades like this for years, and it works well for them because they control almost all of the hardware too, and thus the drivers. Contrast that with my friend's 3 year old Dell laptop that originally ran windows 7. When it was upgraded recently from windows 7 to windows 8, it didn't have drivers for various things, for instance the special buttons on the keyboard for controlling volume and screen brightness, etc. Some things eventually were working, by finding the drivers manually and installing them. Some things never worked. My friend eventually just went back to windows 7.

Folks like my wife, my father in law, my mother, or my grandma certainly aren't going to do that type of driver installation and searching, nor would they don't want to pay a computer tech dude three times as much of an hourly rate because he has to go find a bunch of drivers manually (assuming they even exist).

Unless MIcrosoft solves that kind of issue by making and offering drivers that'll work at least the majority of users, and by making windows capable of FINDING those drivers (how many times have you told Windows to search for a driver and had it come up empty handed, including letting it search 'the internet'?)....they're going to have a bunch of unhappy folks after the upgrade.

[upnorth]

Talked to a counter part who spent the better part of a Sunday upgrading from W7 to W8. Longest part was drivers. Worst was 2 of the drivers that didn't work were the wired and wireless NIC drivers. HUGE PITA if you don't have another device right there to do the sneaker net thing to get drivers.

[Sandmannd]

Problem with windows and drivers is that Microsoft doesn't control the drivers. They don't build the hardware their operating systems go on so don't control the drivers. I know they have a lot built in but can't cover all. That is the painful part for sure. I do think they should be offering free upgrades for what they charge for the OS to begin with though.

[aanderud]

Problem with windows and drivers is that Microsoft doesn't control the drivers. They don't build the hardware their operating systems go on so don't control the drivers. I know they have a lot built in but can't cover all. That is the painful part for sure. I do think they should be offering free upgrades for what they charge for the OS to begin with though.

[Whoaru99]

FWIW, I installed Win 10 Technical Preview on my computer earlier this evening. I have not yet found anything that needs me to find and install a driver.

Granted, I'm not using a special hot key keyboard or anything like that. But, bear in mind it's a Socket 775 mobo running a Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor and none of the hardware/video cards/network cards are new inasmuch as everything is some years old. Was originally running XP and did so for years, then maybe a year or so ago upgraded to W7-64. This clean install to W10-64 was as quick and painless an install as I ever recall a Win install to be.

[aanderud]

FWIW, I installed Win 10 Technical Preview on my computer earlier this evening. I have not yet found anything that needs me to find and install a driver.

...

This clean install to W10-64 was as quick and painless an install as I ever recall a Win install to be.

That's good to hear. I think the best example of windows install FAIL is when I installed windows on a computer that had a gigabit ethernet card -- made by Intel, not some rinky dink manufacturer -- and Windows had no driver built in for the network card. So, I had to go to another computer to download motherboard/chipset/network drivers and bring them over on USB and install them so I could update the rest of the drivers. I can do this without much trouble, being a geek with a half dozen computers and laptops around the house, but there are plenty of folks with just ONE computer, and if the operating system doesn't have network drivers, you're stuck in a pickle!

[PurpleFloyd]

So is there plan to upgrade for free and the set you up to have to pay for all updates in a subscription format or will it be free indefinitely? That would not seem to be an easy thing to explain to shareholders.

[aanderud]

So is there plan to upgrade for free and the set you up to have to pay for all updates in a subscription format or will it be free indefinitely? That would not seem to be an easy thing to explain to shareholders.

I think it's fairly easy to explain to shareholders.

It's just the UPGRADES that are free, for windows 7 and windows 8 users -- not new copies of windows 10 for fresh installation on new computers. The folks that would be upgrading for free would be folks who are currently using older versions of windows that they purchased as part of their PC when they bought it. In all likelihood, those users weren't going to pay for an OS upgrade anyway.

Microsoft knows exactly how many -- or how few -- people actually upgrade their OS at retail prices anyway, and if it was a huge revenue loss they wouldn't do it. I speculate that it's such a miniscule drop in the revenue bucket that they figure it's worth the benefits for them to just give out upgrades like Mac has been doing forever.

The return they get by giving away the OS upgrades is that HOPEFULLY the application support gets better. Now developers/vendors won't have to worry as much about support/compatibility on 3 or 4 versions of windows. Develop for windows 10, and if users complain about things not working just tell the user to upgrae to windows 10, since it's free. With better application support comes (theoretically) more market share....or at least losing less of that market share to Apple.

People still upgrade their PC (and thus buy a new copy of windows) when it becomes obsolete from a performance perspective, and that's where they make the majority of their non-business windows revenue.

[LMITOUT]

Also note that the free upgrade is only good for one year from whatever date they end up choosing.

[DARK30]

The more I play with this 8.1, the more I like it. Now I suppose I wont like 10.

Me thinks its change .... just don't like change

[Whoaru99]

Still playing with the Technical Preview. I have to say, other than getting use to the new style (still have not tried Classic Shell et al.) it seems pretty snappy and performing well. Particularly webpages with lots of banner ad fluff seems to load quite a bit more quickly than on W7/IE.

[PurpleFloyd]

I think it's fairly easy to explain to shareholders.

It's just the UPGRADES that are free, for windows 7 and windows 8 users -- not new copies of windows 10 for fresh installation on new computers. The folks that would be upgrading for free would be folks who are currently using older versions of windows that they purchased as part of their PC when they bought it. In all likelihood, those users weren't going to pay for an OS upgrade anyway.

Microsoft knows exactly how many -- or how few -- people actually upgrade their OS at retail prices anyway, and if it was a huge revenue loss they wouldn't do it. I speculate that it's such a miniscule drop in the revenue bucket that they figure it's worth the benefits for them to just give out upgrades like Mac has been doing forever.

The return they get by giving away the OS upgrades is that HOPEFULLY the application support gets better. Now developers/vendors won't have to worry as much about support/compatibility on 3 or 4 versions of windows. Develop for windows 10, and if users complain about things not working just tell the user to upgrae to windows 10, since it's free. With better application support comes (theoretically) more market share....or at least losing less of that market share to Apple.

People still upgrade their PC (and thus buy a new copy of windows) when it becomes obsolete from a performance perspective, and that's where they make the majority of their non-business windows revenue.

That could be the case. Then again one of the major reasons for launching new versions of Windows in the past was to drive new computer sales and traditionally the new computer was partially justified by the fact that customers were charged to upgrade So they just bought new. This has to result in lpeer sales, lower revenue and a loss in the hype that has traditionally accompanied a new version launch.

Another factor in the past has been that newer versions required more powerful processors,better video, more RAM etc to reach their potential.

Not sure if that is the case with this but I would think chip companies, graphic card companies and other suppliers depended on that as well for sales to justify research and development.

I suppose Apple has done it for a long time and to me, I don't much care but it will be interesting to see how the supply chain reacts.

[delcecchi]

It could also be related to support and the upgrade cycle for business users. Many of them are still on Windows 7 and have decided to skip 8. If Microsoft wants to reduce support or stop it altogether they have to get those folks off of 7.

[PurpleFloyd]

True.