MoreMicrosoft hasn’t yet unveiled the pricing model that it wants to adopt for Windows 10, but some sources familiar with the company’s plans indicated that a freeware license could also be offered in order to make sure that more people would move to the new OS.
While this would be really good news for users worldwide, an analyst warns that adopting such a dramatically different approach would be really risky for Microsoft because it would be then very hard to return to a new pricing model that would have customers charged for their copy of Windows.
Jan Dawson, chief analyst at Jackdaw Research, says in a statement for Silicon Angle that Microsoft needs to play its cards right if it really wants to offer Windows 10 free of charge and then adopt a new paid license strategy for Windows.
Yea I doubt Microsoft is going to do anything differently than when 8 was released so dream a little dream but Microsoft rarely gives anything away for free,
They might giveaway free phones
That is realistic Jeff
I doubt Microsoft will limit it to testers but for the first month or so a discounted upgrade only option,
That is Microsoft's ultimate goal for people to "upgrade" a prior os version,
Not sure why Microsoft would exclude any prior os's like Vista or x-p either if system spec's are compatible
Or would those holdouts be an obvious skip :/
The trick with free is deciding who would qualify for it and who wouldn't. In that situation MS can't please everyone so the in the end they'll simply charge everyone some price.
I believe I'm going to re-install 8-8.1 and use the tool kit to use windows update to get 10 in anticipation of the upgrade offer discount
It pains me to load that thing back up but that is the expendable os either that or an old Vista key
It would be more straight forward to allow the prior/ expendable os activation key to activate 10 with
But for Microsoft might be a bit too straight forward ?
I've got my PC set up with a dual boot of Win8.1 and Win10(for testing). If Win10 is a inexpensive or free upgrade from Win8.1 I'm all set to go!!
If MS really want to eliminate as many prior versions of Windows as possible, they could offer a huge discount on W10 if you return your official Windows install media ("factory cash back").
If they used the "factory cash back" model it wouldn't upset the retailers.
Last edited by lehnerus2000; 14 Jan 2015 at 19:38. Reason: Title
It wouldn't (unless you had discs).
I'm not sure what you mean.
It would be a bonus for MS (i.e. they wouldn't have to pay out).
The point would be to eliminate install media (DVDs) for old versions of Windows.
Laptop recovery partitions are going to wear out sooner or later.
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