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OEM Windows 7 License Sales End This Friday
colinneagle writes This Friday is Halloween, but if you try to buy a PC with Windows 7 pre-loaded after that, you're going to get a rock instead of a treat. Microsoft will stop selling Windows 7 licenses to OEMs after this Friday and you will only be able to buy a machine with Windows 8.1. The good news is that business/enterprise customers will still be able to order PCs 'downgraded' to Windows 7 Professional. Microsoft has not set an end date for when it will cut off Windows 7 Professional to OEMs, but it will likely be a while. This all fits in with typical Microsoft timing. Microsoft usually pulls OEM supply of an OS a year after it removes it from retail. Microsoft cut off the retail supply of Windows 7 in October of last year, although some retailers still have some remaining stock left. If the analytics from Steam are any indicator, Windows 8 is slowly working its way into the American public, but mostly as a Windows XP replacement. Windows 7, both 32-bit and 64-bit, account for 59% of their user base. Windows 8 and 8.1 account for 28%, while XP has dwindled to 4%.
There is no earthly benefit to running Windows as 64bit and no one can articulate what that benefit is. Oftentimes it makes things worse as one is required to run parallel versions of things and not even Java is a one-size-fits-all across the board. The vaunted promise that 'things will run better and faster' is complete nonsense and hardware vendors as it is find it difficult or impossible to create useful distinctions in drivers or even sort out which version is a maintenance fix for what. So they killed off XP? Fine. Killing off Win7? Fine. Killed off Win8 with no clear path forward whereas 8.1 isn't an upgrade it's a replacement? Fine. And now Win9 is Win10 and once again Redmond will give us 36 dozen different sub-versions? Wonderful. But let's at least disabuse ourselves that 64bit is meaningful.
The stupidity that gets modded to 5 these days signals that /. is gone.
A person would have to be completely delusional to think that selling complex software for reasonable prices is gouging. Comparing to Linux, which is not ready for the desktop, and OSX that just supports a single vendor's hardware is absurd.
Boyfriend? Based on your name we had you pegged as a carpetmuncher. What gives?