Microsoft isn't giving away Win 10. It's giving away the first year, after which users will be locked into an annual upgrade cycle... for money.
I'm kinda curious about this detail too. Having never bought a windoze machine, I'm not sure how this works. So...you buy a generic PC with Win10 installed...then after a year, the updates all stop, and you no longer get security patches, unless you sign up for a subscription?
I think there is an analog on the Apple side. I'm not positive, but I think Apple periodically stops supporting certain OSX (and iOS) releases as well. e.g. someone exploits something in OSX 10.6.8 (the last update) I don't think Apple would be pushing a 10.6.9 update. Their policy would be "buy a new mac that supports El Cap so you're up to date. And oh there's a migration assistant allowing you to set up in a snap, and we'll recycle your old machine for free."
You will still get security updates and patches until that version reaches EOL.
I find that number interesting, define installed, maybe people have to install more than one and they counted each and every down load.
My wife company got her a new laptop, and it had 10 on if no other choice, best part she works for software company and their own software breaks on 10, well Edge which is the new IE for windows 10. They can fix it because MS stripped out feature which IE had and Edge does not and those features are need to make their web based software work.
Next the laptop come default with the touch pad set for double touch, ever time you tap on the touch pad twice whether you meant to or not it click. Generally not an issue go to the control panel and turn that feature off. Good luck finding it, took us almost 30 minutes to figure it out. The touch pad control panel in window 10 has been strip out. it just have basic controls. We found the advance button for the touch pad which took you to the old windows 7 device driver control panel, in there und the device driver you can locate the disable feature to turn off the touch pad double touch feature.
Yeah windows 10 was a rewrite of windows, not, they just add another layer over the old windows platform. it just a lot hard to get to the old windows interfaces which are still there if you work hard enough to get to them.
Microsoft isn't giving away Win 10. It's giving away the first year, after which users will be locked into an annual upgrade cycle... for money.
They haven't been clear about that. You have a year to upgrade from a previous suitable Windows. Have they said anything about a subsequent Windows? It's probably to their benefit to maximize the number of devices and computers using Windows. This will only benefit their server business which is big, their app store which is now much better. Microsoft seems to be doing what they have to to make up for lost time with their lack of a good mobile policy. Windows 10 and 8.1 are actually quite good.
Apple, Google, Microsoft. Apple depends on the iPhone, Google on ads and Microsoft on business. It's an interesting trio.
***Reality*** "We have given away free 200 million windows devices." Or "We um, eh, have more than 200 million devices running windows. They are all still in the warehouses and stockrooms, but we have them. heh heh heh.
***Reality*** "We have given away free 200 million windows devices." Or "We um, eh, have more than 200 million devices running windows. They are all still in the warehouses and stockrooms, but we have them. heh heh heh.
Depends how they're phrasing it. 200 million activations means literal customer activations, be they enterprise deployments or home users. At which point, Microsoft doesn't care as they money is in their hand.
I'm actually really enjoying Windows 10. It's fast and beautiful and it suits my needs very well. Obviously not everyone is going to like it because everyone has different tastes, but that doesn't mean it's crap.
Don't have Windows 10 and I don't really care either. I just dumped my Dell laptop and have moved entirely to the iPad pro. The pencil is really slick for taking notes on the fly. And far better than a stylus for a surface pro.
If MSFT really wanted to bring applications to its Windows phone, they would have put an Android runtime environment on it. There is a huge amount of software for the Android platform. Windows in any flavor is no longer a must have piece of software. I can get by without it all together. In fact iOS has better support these days. And iOS will continue to get better support while Windows fades into oblivion as Intel x86 CPUs fail to deliver state of the art performance, even at obscene power consumption levels when compared to the A series CPUs.
Microsoft's ARM endeavor has failed, but they desperately need to move over to the platform in any case. They have no choice, but are inexorably linked to x86.
Just a matter of time now. TSMC has the Capex and talent to get to better and more advanced manufacturing processes than Intel. Apple and TSMC have now matched a midrange laptop class Core i5 at far lower cost to Apple for a third of the power consumption. The A10X promises to achieve core i7 levels of performance. That will only leave Intel desktop CPUs offering better performance in CPU tasks while Intel's integrated graphic units get destroyed by Apple's PowerVR based graphics cores.
If MSFT cannot successfully move Windows to ARM, it's game over for them. Apple is relentlessly driving TSMC and Samsung to more advanced manufacturing nodes. I fully expect TSMC and Samsung to be moving to 7nm by the time Intel gets to 10nm. It will be a devastating development for Intel as Qualcomm and Mediatek will be producing very inexpensive CPUs on a process matching Intel's most advanced. Samsung and Apple will be on 7nm and exceeding Intel's most advanced CPUs with the Exynos and A series.
Perhaps MSFT can convince AMD to produce an x86/ARM hybrid CPU to help transition Windows to ARM. Apple by that time will have negotiated another OS transition in moving their laptop and desktop lines to ARM this time off of x86.
Apple will pull off several instruction set transitions in moving from 68k to PPC, PPC to x86 and x86 to ARM before MSFT can pull off even one. I am not certain that MSFT can do it at all. But the days of x86 are nearly over. The age of ARM is taking over. Intel is outclassed and overmatched. There is no way they can bully their way out of this one like they did to AMD. And as Apple produces CPUs at far lower cost with superior energy consumption characteristics and equal to superior performance, the writing is on the wall for Intel. And as Intel goes, Microsoft must follow.
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I find that number interesting, define installed, maybe people have to install more than one and they counted each and every down load.
My wife company got her a new laptop, and it had 10 on if no other choice, best part she works for software company and their own software breaks on 10, well Edge which is the new IE for windows 10. They can fix it because MS stripped out feature which IE had and Edge does not and those features are need to make their web based software work.
Next the laptop come default with the touch pad set for double touch, ever time you tap on the touch pad twice whether you meant to or not it click. Generally not an issue go to the control panel and turn that feature off. Good luck finding it, took us almost 30 minutes to figure it out. The touch pad control panel in window 10 has been strip out. it just have basic controls. We found the advance button for the touch pad which took you to the old windows 7 device driver control panel, in there und the device driver you can locate the disable feature to turn off the touch pad double touch feature.
Yeah windows 10 was a rewrite of windows, not, they just add another layer over the old windows platform. it just a lot hard to get to the old windows interfaces which are still there if you work hard enough to get to them.
Apple, Google, Microsoft. Apple depends on the iPhone, Google on ads and Microsoft on business. It's an interesting trio.
If MSFT really wanted to bring applications to its Windows phone, they would have put an Android runtime environment on it. There is a huge amount of software for the Android platform. Windows in any flavor is no longer a must have piece of software. I can get by without it all together. In fact iOS has better support these days. And iOS will continue to get better support while Windows fades into oblivion as Intel x86 CPUs fail to deliver state of the art performance, even at obscene power consumption levels when compared to the A series CPUs.
Microsoft's ARM endeavor has failed, but they desperately need to move over to the platform in any case. They have no choice, but are inexorably linked to x86.
Just a matter of time now. TSMC has the Capex and talent to get to better and more advanced manufacturing processes than Intel. Apple and TSMC have now matched a midrange laptop class Core i5 at far lower cost to Apple for a third of the power consumption. The A10X promises to achieve core i7 levels of performance. That will only leave Intel desktop CPUs offering better performance in CPU tasks while Intel's integrated graphic units get destroyed by Apple's PowerVR based graphics cores.
If MSFT cannot successfully move Windows to ARM, it's game over for them. Apple is relentlessly driving TSMC and Samsung to more advanced manufacturing nodes. I fully expect TSMC and Samsung to be moving to 7nm by the time Intel gets to 10nm. It will be a devastating development for Intel as Qualcomm and Mediatek will be producing very inexpensive CPUs on a process matching Intel's most advanced. Samsung and Apple will be on 7nm and exceeding Intel's most advanced CPUs with the Exynos and A series.
Perhaps MSFT can convince AMD to produce an x86/ARM hybrid CPU to help transition Windows to ARM. Apple by that time will have negotiated another OS transition in moving their laptop and desktop lines to ARM this time off of x86.
Apple will pull off several instruction set transitions in moving from 68k to PPC, PPC to x86 and x86 to ARM before MSFT can pull off even one. I am not certain that MSFT can do it at all. But the days of x86 are nearly over. The age of ARM is taking over. Intel is outclassed and overmatched. There is no way they can bully their way out of this one like they did to AMD. And as Apple produces CPUs at far lower cost with superior energy consumption characteristics and equal to superior performance, the writing is on the wall for Intel. And as Intel goes, Microsoft must follow.