This sounds like a great deal to me. My only concern is if we will have the option of a clean install instead of their automatic upgrade. Personally, I'd rather do a clean install.

I don't think Microsoft gets it. It's not about the money, it's about comfort zone. There's no reason to change from Win7 to Win9 for most people/businesses, as long as Win7 work fine for their daily needs. It doesn't matter whether such upgrade is free, costs very little or they simply end support for that OS quicker.

Just today, out of several PC's I've spent my time on at work, I've re-installed original Win XP on two different PC's not because the company doesn't have money, which they do - they simply have no reason to switch to Win 7, not to mention Win 9. For the record, all other PC's were Windows 7 installations and in the past 1,5 month, on dozens/hundred of PC's, I yet have to install ONE copy of Windows 8/8.1.

Clam said:

I don't think Microsoft gets it. It's not about the money, it's about comfort zone. There's no reason to change from Win7 to Win9 for most people/businesses, as long as Win7 work fine for their daily needs. It doesn't matter whether such upgrade is free, costs very little or they simply end support for that OS quicker.

Just today, out of several PC's I've spent my time on at work, I've re-installed original Win XP on two different PC's not because the company doesn't have money, which they do - they simply have no reason to switch to Win 7, not to mention Win 9. For the record, all other PC's were Windows 7 installations and in the past 1,5 month, on dozens/hundred of PC's, I yet have to install ONE copy of Windows 8/8.1.

Don't the people you reinstalled Xp for understand that the OS is no longer supported and it is a security risk??

I still want to get a copy from NewEgg when it comes out. Nothing like a DVD with an new OS on it.
IMO.. :)

BunnyJ said:

Don't the people you reinstalled Xp for understand that the OS is no longer supported and it is a security risk??

They know that, but they simply aren't too worried about it. It's really not about the money, considering most companies whos PC's we maintain are doing pretty well, so even if MS offered FREE upgrade for everyone who has Windows installed, it wouldn't change much. It's also worth mentioning that certain PC's simply aren't good enough to run newer OS, so they don't have much of a choice either.

What pisses me off the most are these new machines - for example, I came accross some newer Acer notebook today that came with FreeDOS and the person wanted me to install Windows 7 on it, instead of Windows 8.1, and worst thing was that there weren't official drivers provided by Acer for anything other than Win 8/8.1! I don't mind the fact that almost all new notebooks are sold either without Windows or with Win 8/8.1, but come on - if someone wants to use older version of Windows, why not allow him? I mean, he paid for it after all! I don't know whether Microsoft is involved with this somehow, but it's annoying as hell. I can't wait to get my hands on Windows 9 and I hope it'll turn out good and people will actually buy it and ask me to install it, because I'm getting tired of installing Windows XP & 7, but sadly, I don't see it happening unless there'll be serious security breaches which will eventually force people to use latest software, if their hardware is capable of running it.