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Windows 7 Will Be Free For a Year
Barence writes "Microsoft is effectively giving away Windows 7 free for a year with the launch of the Release Candidate. The Release Candidate is now available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers, and will go on unlimited, general release on 5 May. The software will not expire until 1 June 2010, giving testers more than a year's free access to Windows 7. 'It's available to as many people who see fit to use it, although we wouldn't recommend it to just your average user,' John Curran, director of the Windows Client Group told PC Pro. 'We'd very strongly encourage anyone on the beta to move to the Release Candidate.'"
Will this include XP as a VM for a year as well?
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
This could be Ballmer's strategy against Linux as he repeatedly has said that you can't beat Linux' price.
With this they will surely retain the market share, in a recession, for an otherwise very expensive product; it costs more than one third of a new pc.
Actually the Win7 RC doesn't have any path to the full, licenced version of Win7 at the end of the testing period, because it's released for testing, not as a freebie.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
So Microsoft's OS division is now reduced to copying the business plan of heroin dealers?
Why save your soul when you can sell it for a profit?
I don't think so (personal opinion here). I bought a new computer 2 months ago that had Vista preinstalled after using XP since it came out. So far for me Vista is every bit as stable as XP. People will download Windows 7 and they will either like it or they won't. If it sucks, it doesn't matter what people are using at the time, they won't switch. And if people are THAT desperate to get away from Vista, they can just go back to XP (something that I thought I would want to do when faced with buying a machine with Vista preinstalled).
If my experience with Asians from less wealthy nations (esp. Sth East Asians) is worth anything, the majority of them will still just buy bootleg as that is the only system they really know or its just the way they do things. Unless they actually see a real reason to download 3gig or more, burn it to a DVD etc they'll just go to the market and buy a bootleg for 40 rupees (call it a dollar).
sudo mount --milk --sugar
They're not giving you Windows 7 for free. They allow anyone to use a beta version of Windows 7 for one year. And, yes, RC is still beta. Microsoft has admitted that they falsely and intentionally label the last few betas as RCs to make hardware vendors to test their hardware and write proper drivers before a RTM build is created.
The only purpose of this /. submission is to make money on ads or something I suppose (I didn't follow any link, I confess, as I don't follow misleading and moronic articles).
...they will pay me to install Windows on my box. I might be interested in that.
Reply to That ||
"in many cases the idea of re-installing a system would be daunting enough to suddenly make the key code seem cheap."
The flaw in your logic is that he would have backed up and installed this version of Windows 7, so having doe it once already I doubt whether having to do it a second time would be anything more than a day's downtime. Besides, why would he go for a lime limited official version when an unlimited cracked version would give more benefits for the same price?
Unless of course that was a funny post and my brain ain't woken up enough to see it yet, lol.
I think this not-switching thing won't happen. 7 is worlds better than that steaming pile o'Vista.
It's actually fast, as crazy as this sounds.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
Yes, it's "good on the desktop" but there are still quite a few important applications for which there is no Linux app that can do the job. This is especially true in the area of media production.
I would have switched to Linux long ago if there was any possible way I could get my work done on it. In fact, every time there's a new version of Ubuntu Studio, I try it out on a machine in my studio that's just for that purpose. And every time, I realize that there is simply no Linux substitute for the most critical apps I use. And I'm not talking about something that's so esoteric for there not to be a market. There are more than a dozen companies that produce DAW applications for Mac and/or Windows, for example: Steinberg, Cakewalk, Propellerheads, MOTU, bias, Cockos, Avid, Sony, Native Instruments, MAGIX, Ableton, and hundreds of companies who create virtual instruments to use in these DAWs.
How many of them have apps for Linux? Maybe one. How many of those apps for Linux actually work? Maybe none. Cockos' Reaper makes interesting use of Linux machines for offloading resource-hungry processes like rendering, so I can make use that Linux machine, but it is impossible for a professional media producer to use Linux exclusively. And if you're one of the hundreds of thousands of "amateur" or hobbyist media producers, which platform are you going to choose? One on which you can produce something or one on which you cannot.
A similar accounting can be had for video production. So, if Linux is going to make any inroads into this small but important market, professional developers are going to have to be persuaded to develop for Linux.
I'm a broken record about this, but there is a significant need for another professional, well-funded OS in the personal computing market. The need might not be so great if Apple were to produce an OS that was not proprietary to their own hardware. If they can make a "non-iPhone" iPhone for Verizon to sell, then they can produce a "non-Macintosh" OSX. As well capitalized and run as Apple is, they'd clobber Windows. If Apple had such an OS on the shelves last year when Vista was tanking, they would own the PC OS market today. Instead they continue to target elitists and fashionistas. They'll stay rich, god bless them, but as consumers we have to think about what we need, not just brand loyalty.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I wonder if this is an experiment in the methods that Linux distros use: provide the OS for free and charge for service contracts.
good admins who know what they are doing(windows , Linux, etc) are more expensive. So for a company to afford more sever and desktop licenses MSFT engineers Windows to be admined by monkeys banging on keyboards.
The ones who can also shout "developers" while banging on their keyboards. Become help desk techicains. The monkeys who can do all of the above and fling their own poo join MSFT marketing.
Seriously though Windows is setup by bad wannabe admins because MSFT marketing has convinced CEO's that anyone can do it.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
What they really need is to get people to stop replacing it with an older version, and to stop trying to get the older one on their new hardware.
Vista is approaching a 25% share of the market.
Top Operating System Share Trend
It's easy to imagine a 10% decline in XP's share and a 10% increase in Vista's share May-to-May.
The geek looks in the mirror and thinks that he is representative of the mass consumer market.
The HP desktop from WalMart is quad core and ships with 6 GB RAM and 64 Bit Vista. In six months - nine months, whatever - it will be an i7 with 9 GB RAM.
Serious horsepower at a mass market price. Mature 64 bit drivers. Win 7 just around the corner.
What's not to love?
Dual-core is Coming Soon to a netbook near you. It won't be long before XP stops making sense even at entry level.
Let me just quote the comments from this thread:
MSDN and technet require very expensive subscriptions
Technet is 349.00 for the first year / 249.00 per year after that. That isn't expensive.
You counter his argument that it is not free by pointing out it is MERELY 250 bucks a year...
Who would have thought FREE would become such a complex concept to some people.
I don't know where you've seen the word "free" in GGP, because it wasn't there. He said "expensive". $250/year is hardly expensive, but that's beside the point anyway, since it's not what you've taken issue with.
Please mod parent Offtopic.
I don't know what the relevant stats are to be honest, but I'm pretty sure that some 80% to 90% of software development these days is for web based apps, i.e. backend and browser. People got burnt so often by developing for propietry platforms in the past, and I don't only mean Microsoft by that, that I think that client OS development is truly becoming somewhat irrelevant.
Microsoft knows this and tried so many times to lock people into its own web platform technologies, be that ActiveX, IE, Silverlight, XAML etc. But it never worked. The web is no longer Microsoft's backyard and people are tired of being forced to either cow to Microsoft, Apple or Adobe.
Personally, I'm glad and it's abaout time.
Why I'm being labeled flamebait for daring to point out that the popular myth of "If I buy Vista now I won't have to buy Win7 in six months" is wrong, but what I was trying to point out was that by making it so OEM gets Win7 for free, and ONLY OEMs, it has made the system builders and mom & pop shops avoid Vista like the plague. Why? Because of The Osborne effect , that's why.
Why in the nine hells would I want to give MSFT MORE money than the OEMs do, just to get screwed and have to go buy another OS for full price in 6 months while they get it for free? Does that make ANY sense? And let us not kid ourselves, Vista has been a PR nightmare for MSFT, and the second Win7 comes out they will drop it like a bastard stepchild. Just look what they did with WinME, which was the last PR disaster they had. Sure they SAID they would support it for 5 years, but how many service packs did you see for WinME? How much stuff did you see coming out for WinME after MSFT released XP? Pretty much zip. Anyone who buys a non OEM Vista right now would have to be nuts, because MSFT is going to dump that turkey so fast it will make your head swim.
So mark me flamebait all you want, I got more karma to burn than I know what to do with anyway. I WANT Windows 7, and I would be happy to pay them for it NOW by buying Windows Vista Home Premium 64bit. But they don't want my money, because if I bought a lousy Dell box I would get it free in six months, if I actually bought system builders or even retail I wouldn't. So by giving MSFT MORE money than the OEMs do(which is estimated to be around $50-$70 for Home Premium) I would get LESS than they get. Does that make ANY sense? Why on earth would I want to pay more for less? All they have done by limiting this program to their buddies at HP and Dell is make sure all the mom and pop shops like mine that build and sell PCs wouldn't touch Vista with a ten foot barge pole.
I have tried Vista, I find it irritating. I have also tried Win7, and like it. But by limiting this to a few of their buddies instead of all who buy Vista now they are saying "we don't want you. We think we want their business but not yours" which is fine. I will just use this Windows XP disc that I have had sitting in a drawer for years and MSFT loses more sales when their numbers are already down. Not a very smart move if you ask me, especially when it could drive sales of an unpopular OS.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.