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Microsoft May Have Price Increases in Store For Windows 10 Pro Workstation, Win 10 Downgrade Customers (zdnet.com)
Mary Jo Foley, reporting for ZDNet: Microsoft soon will be adding a new edition of Windows 10 to its lineup. That edition, Windows 10 Pro for Workstations, may include more than just a new name and feature set. It also may come with a change to the way Microsoft licenses and prices Windows 10 for its PC maker partners -- who potentially could pass on these changes to end-user customers. I've heard from a couple of customers recently who've been contacted by different OEMs about the coming changes. One said that Microsoft will begin licensing the Windows 10 Desktop operating system by processor family, and all PCs sold with Intel Xeon workstation processors will be affected by this change. One customer said he was told there could be a price increase of roughly $70 per operating system for use on systems with processors with four or fewer cores. For machines with Xeon processors with more than four cores, there could be a price increase of roughly $230 per operating system, I was told. Windows 10 Pro for Workstations is going to be available around the time Windows 10 Fall Creators Update starts rolling out, which is October 17.
Windows should be licensed to the PC, license control is too weak. There are too many hardware changes that can be done.
It needs to be licensed to the serial numbers of the DIMMs
it needs to be licensed to the serial number of the mouse and keyboard
It needs to be licensed to the EDID of the monitor
it needs to be licensed to the serial number of the HDD
it needs to be licensed to the serial number of the network card, wireless card
Now of course, for a small fee, users could add extra hardware.
-New network card, $5.00
-New mouse $2.50
-New keyboard $2.50
-New Monitor $5.00
-Dual Monitor $10.00
-New DIMM $2.00/Gb
-New Hard-Drive, $0.05/Gb
People need to learn that they need to pay for software.