This is potentially bad news for W7 and the W8 Series fans.
MS will be forced to "accidentally" include GWX (or worse) in the monthly update rollups for those operating systems.


Lol, yes I can see that coming too . or it will be an extension of their gracious offer, as they do not want people to miss out ! I will keep a very close eye on things, It would not surprise me if they had already installed it actually.

I can't imagine Microsoft doing a GWX inclusion, again for W7 or W8. Forcing people into a free software is one thing, but forcing them into purchasing with a continual nag screen is quite another beast. I see First Class Lawsuit written all over that scenario. I also can't see a free offering again, since people have already purchased W10, I would think they would have to refund those purchases, it isn't going to happen.

I could never see myself buying Windows 10, if a machine comes with it installed (i might use it), thank goodness, I still have 5 unused copies of windows 7, and one Windows 8.1 Pro / with Media Center setting on my desk. Ewww, maybe I will be able to scalp them for huge monies in the future.

I see them shifting gears, selling Windows 10 at a lowered cost and try to collect revenues via other avenues, apps, office, Cloud services, etc.. Business, small and mid-sized are going more and more Apple/Andriod management, Square and PayPal Here, card services, is easy, efficient, and very low cost to use and maintain.

But Wall Street doesn't seem to agree with me, so who knows.

lehnerus2000 said:

According to NetMarketShare, W10 showed no real growth again.

There's something seriously wrong with those statistics. Does Netmarketshare and StatCounter only track American websites or something?

The entire Australian government has switched to Windows 10 (within the last few months) and I've personally upgraded a few thousand machines to Windows 10 that are going to Vietnam and other countries provided to us for refurbishment by dozens of government schools... getting new hardware specifically for Windows 10.

Also, what's the point of yet another GWX for Windows 7 when the free upgrade still hasn't ended? Despite the media claiming otherwise, you can still upgrade Windows 7 to Windows 10 for free.

put 10 on a backup laptop. doesnt seem to have anything I actually want or need. is the future of 10 going to be free and eventually in return a monitor covered with constant ads that cannot be blocked, linked to whatever you are doing on your computer at the time (working at home off the web, working online, net surfing in general)?

Msongs

PS - only down side to 7 I see is if I want to do a clean install using my licensed win 7 purchased version going to be a drag doing all the updates since the install disk was made.

Honestly I'm not surprised, and I'm not worried. Windows 7 is a decent OS, and there will always be a section of users that will NOT upgrade come hell or high water. Microsoft is not financially threatened by being forced to support these systems, as they would have to support Windows 7 until the doom date irregardless - though admittedly it might end up being extended like WinXP's was.

Many of these people will upgrade when their system fails, or when their software becomes compatible with 10. The important thing is that most are on Windows 10, and Microsoft can now prepare them for the future of Windows.

This is honestly nothing more than market saturation. We don't need to upgrade our PCs anymore until they die, and a majority of OS upgrades come from OEM purchases. Heck, you can get an Android tablet and Bluetooth keyboard for a lot of blue haired folks and they will be thrilled to run google chat and video conference the great grandkids, type emails and play candy crush. They don't care what the OS is as long as its the one the kids bought them three years ago.

As for the business users, yes thousands have upgraded. However, millions have not. Many corporations, including where I work, have pilots going, but it's another couple years before that gets off the ground because of leasing agreements, plus a plethora of in-house verticle software that is still moving from fat client to n-tier. I know for us we are also playing with HVDs, which are becoming very popular.(The more things change....) So growth isn't what it used to be in the OS field.

My first 80's "real" PC was a mac plus. My first real IBM Clone PC was a 286 with 2 meg of RAM and a 40 meg Hardrive. Sucker set me back a mere 2.5k. My point here is that back then upgrades were needed. Either the hardware, because you needed new things like those pesky floating point processors, or the OS, because MSDOS thought 1 meg was more than anyone would ever need for processing and driver space.

Today, we don't have that problem, thankfully. Even gaming. Except for older farts like me, and gaming professionals/prosumers, most folks are happy with and XBox One or a Playstation. You can now edit video online if your PC can't handle the load, or heck, use your phone. Ironically, Microsoft's zeal to put out newer better faster is bumping up against people who have what they need and don't see the point. Even tablets have this issue now. Microsoft needs to be looking at the new places, like Azure and some of their really cool hardware, for new revenue. The OS stream isn't dry, but she ain't what she used to be.

I can't believe how XP is being still on the thrid place.

Ghost82 said:

I can't believe how XP is being still on the third place.

Well the first thing that comes to mind are the recent articles on ATMs running Windows XP still. Add to that older programs that run on the OS. This doesn't even necessarily mean it's a machine's primary OS. I know lots of folks who run Windows XP in a VM. They may use it on the interwebs for various reasons and it gets picked up on one of these surveys. Heck, I know of machines still running DOS either in VMs or even on an actual device. If everything is working the way you want, and there isn't a security threat, why not? Now that said, the ATMs mentioned have been hacked, so that's a different animal.