Microsoft might offer Windows 10 as a subscription

The point of many expensive software subscriptions like for Adobe Photoshop is two fold:
(a) You may only need it occasionally and can pay month by month, while the full product is really expensive
(b) You get the latest version whenever its out, without having to re-buy it every 2 years (which goes well with temporary use in (a))

That may or may not make sense for something like Office, but there is enough people using Office 365 already.

 

I can imagine scenario where it would finally mean something:
- License in bought PC is not pre-paid, therefore not inflating price of notebooks/OEM systems in general
- Then when you start using it, OS will give you choice to use your Retail Windows version, or activate device bound OEM or use subscription for given device

Would be lovely as that would decrease price of 99% of notebooks. And people could actually feel that they can try other OS without throwing money for OS to garbage.

 

Ah. Great. "PC as a pay for service." Except the PC is actually yours and you have to pay a subscription to use it.

Mark my words. This will be mandatory at some point. That's where we're heading towards. You won't own any applications, games or the OS. They'll be "services." Any non-service software will be locked out "for better security."

Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster that Linux exists.

 

Ah aha ha haham, dear Nadella, I am going to buy it soon!

...

What, you didn't receive the payment, you kinda Indian Scrooge? I was talking about the coffee, you know, I just finished the last can!

 

Good ol' days when for most of us the only monthly expense needed for having/enjoying a pc or even a console was just your internet provider's bill..

 

You already can't buy MS Office in full. I'd never support them doing this if I can manage it. Even Apple, the Queen of subscription services, knows better than to do this.

 

Couldn't care less. Been Windows-free for almost 10 years now thanks to macOS and Linux.

 

This isn't new news.. they have been talking about this since before W10 and it being datamined. The line in the sand from what I could figure out was consumer one time purchased vs enterprise being licensed. With w10pro costing more for certain higher core count processors and the change in server licensing from chip to core. It just another money grab.

 

Every now and then I download a Linux distro that I like the look of, just in case this subscription crap looks in danger of becoming a reality on Windows

At least we have alternatives

 

Fine, i will just resub to SunnyUsenet and get my Windows that way.

 

So, I paid for Windows 7, and own it outright. Then, I upgraded it to 10. And now, it appears it's just a matter of time until Microsoft wants me to start paying in order to continue using the Windows 10 I essentially already paid for? Not just "NO", but "HELL NO". I'll do whatever I have to do to avoid this. I will NOT pay monthly for an OS. This is nothing but greedy bullshit. HELL NO!

 

Something tells me this is also going to sound the death knell for cheap grey market Windows keys. Microsoft might not be able to blacklist existing keys (without a huge legal kerfuffle), but you can be damn sure if they want to they'll shut off the tap.

 

It is actually just the opposite. Instead of making one time decision to pay the software for 5 years, with subscription you pay 5€ or so initially and you can quit any time. If the software is actually worth the money, then it shouldn't be a problem to pay. In any case, there is still the perpetual license available if you want to buy in big time.

 

If you're a gamer but not a hardcore one, you could probably ditch Windows now. Thanks to Proton and Wine, I've been able to ditch Windows 100%. Of my Steam library (which is somewhere over 100 titles, I forget exactly how much), I think 6 are currently unplayable with no known solution at all. There are a handful of extras that don't work but can with a little tweaking. For example, some games fail to run because of DRM issues, but they'll work fine if you find an "anti-DRM" crack. Others will work fine if you disable esync. Considering how young the Proton project is, it's surprisingly well put together and evolving very fast. To put things into perspective, when Proton was first released a few months ago, my list of non-working games was around 15.

But, I would recommend you stick with Windows if you are any one of the following:
* You play competitive games
* You mostly play new AAA titles, especially ones with their own DRM
* You treat stability with a high priority
* You hate change
* You have a 144Hz+ display (120Hz might be fine if your hardware is good enough)
That might seem like a big list, but considering most people aren't hardcore competitive and use a 1080p@60Hz display, the only thing that would hold back the average gamer from switching is their mentality and some (but not all) AAA games being unavailable. Granted, not being able to play AAA games is a significant disadvantage.

 

Not perspective. Same as Office 365 will have zero popularity outside USA, where MS charging inaccessible price.

 

Subscriptions for Windows torrent "editions" will increase...even more.

 

If Linux ever is going to be looked at as a serious alternative to Windows for games, it also needs to get its performance up to par with Windows in all games. Even the games with official Linux support tend to perform notably worse on Linux. The Linux versions also typically have higher minimum requirements than the Windows versions.

These benchmarks are two years old, but Rise of the Tomb Raider on Linux generally has a 10 FPS disadvantage compared to Windows. Official minimum requirement is GTX 680 2GB for Linux, but only the GTX 650 2GB for Windows. Similar gap in specs for AMD cards.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/artic...inux-heres-a-look-at-it-with-benchmarks.11576

Here are some other benchmarks. The only game that performed well on Linux was Metro Redux, it even performed better than the 1060 in Windows. The rest though, are a horrible case for promoting Linux to gamers.
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=pascal-win10-linux&num=1

 

Hardly a week goes by without microsoft announcing some sort of moronic plan.

If you ask me, microsoft product are all free.

 

When ported properly, Linux has a tendency to outperform Windows. When devs are lazy and use a DX to OGL conversion method, performance suffers pretty hard. That being said:

RotTR is sort of an "in-between" game. They still did a DX to OGL (and Vulkan, I think) conversion, but at least some effort to optimization was made.
Also, 2 years in Linux time is a very long time. Although Linux is still overall behind Windows in regards to GPUs as a whole, progress and updates occur at a much faster rate. 2 years ago, there were certain games that weren't playable at all on certain drivers, but now run flawlessly.

Anyway, I do take your point - as long as games like Deus Ex Mankind Divided have such horrendous native performance while others like Shadow of Mordor only focus on high-end Nvidia cards, Linux will (on paper anyway) remain a worse gaming platform than Windows. However, it has the potential to be better, and even for games like RotTR, as long as you're above 60FPS, the small performance losses are irrelevant to most gamers (same sort of argument that people make for Ryzen).

Tremendous progress has been made in 2 years, and that progress seems to be accelerating. Thanks to Proton and AMD being nearly feature-compliant/complete with their open-source drivers (Nvidia's closed-source drivers have always been pretty complete), progress has been unprecedented.

 

This isn't a surprise. Ever since Nadella became CEO, Microsoft has been transitioning away from a license model to a subscription model. Office already made the transition, it's only natural that Windows would be next.

This will undoubtedly be a more profitable venture for Microsoft and will make shareholders happy. We Windows users will also have little choice in the matter and will accept it in the end (seriously now, gamers aren't going to abandon Windows). Whatever their faults, Microsoft knows how to make money - there's a reason why they are the most valuable company in the world.

I could opt for a subscription if the price is low and it came with enough goodies - one of the reasons why I subscribe to Office 365 is the 1 TB of cloud storage. If it was $4.99 with 1 TB of cloud space then that might be good enough.