Ms planning Windows 10 updates via subscription

The whole target of the two articles are different, the ZDnet one is talking of and to the large enterprise users, the Daily Fail is taking this as something coming to "a PC world near you" The first makes a lot of sense to make more of a steady income for Microsoft, (although most major enterprises are on a leased seat contract anyway)

The Home PC market is not a viable target for subscription models, which is why Microsoft went to the Free for private use for existing users model, (to shorten the support model for Windows to something more manageable for those personal free support contracts), I would not be surprised to see Win 8.1 support reduced as it was not a great market anyway.

It is possible one day special premium feature funded by subscription could happen but the base model will never be subscription. How is this different to leasing MS Office.

jimbo45 said:

the big problem is that if HOME users don't update then security loopholes etc become endemic.

Hence Microsoft's decision to make this automatic, on Home versions of windows, which is of course extremely popular

An enterprise can keep reasonable control over its PC's and other resources and with some of the fees individual I.T experts can command it makes sense for them to contract out to say Ms for a fee which probably can be reclaimed back from corporation tax as some sort of business expense.

If you recall, the Wannacry outbreak in 2017, the last major system attack, mostly caused issues for major government departments and corporations who had not bothered to keep up with patches that were available months before the attack

Home users are different - Ms was forced to add years to the life of XP for all sorts of reasons - but when it became impossible to patch security up any more they just pulled it. [

XP had it's life extended several times but then ran it's full course of the agreed extended support period

Office 2010 is on that type of "last ditch life support" while office 2007 and office 2003 still "sort of work". The security problems in say an office suite are comparatively minor compared with a full blown OS.

All microsoft products had a standard support setup, Five years full support and 5 Years extended security only support, this would explain the situation, that 2010 is is almost at the end of extended support anything before 2010 is out of support so any ability to run is a bonus - of course support may be available for old out of support products, If Microsoft want to support it and you are prepared to pay for the privilege

Cheers
jimbo

Stories like that are circulating ever since MS announced ( somewhat badly) Windows 10 "As a service" which any construed as it's going to switch to something like Office 365 model which coincidentally came out at about same time.
At about same time MS released some "test balloons" about OS going as Online on their servers only essentially reducing a computer/device as only a terminal or even a DRM content like some games developers tried. Nothing came out of it of course but stories are persisting in one form or other.
Psychological aspect notwithstanding, many technological aspects like fast and available enough internet would make them unusable in 90% of the world.

Steve C said:

I expect MS will maintain free updates for home users to continue to profit from app purchases from the MS Store.

I just hope they don't start to deprecate the already limited features on the current free stuff like Outlook.com, Office Online et al in order to 'encourage' those of us that use them to switch to the basic paid for options...

Being realistic the relatively small market sector of the home and small business market make very little profits for Microsoft.

Most purchase Windows and office with the actual OEM hardware, at the highly discounted rates that the OEMs are given. This is compounded by the fact that Microsoft offer free support to these users, so a basic user could actually cost Microsoft money over the lifetime of ownership. Small Business users may spend a little more that the basic user, as will gamers and enthusiasts, they will use the pro version of software, and likely perform their own support. But this is a small market so does not make up for the low profit basic home market.

If this is the case with Home markets why not just charge for everything in the same way they charge the Corporate and organisational markets? Lease the software and charge for support ... The basic fact is that the whole Home / Small Business market is a loss leader, there to ensure that when anyone thinks computer they think Microsoft, plus they have a basic understanding of how to use Windows, so it makes business sense for the management of the major corporations to specify Microsoft software for use in there business.

Changing the way that Windows is "sold" to the home, Enthusiast, and small business customers would be a bad idea for Microsoft, as although they may make a little more money, they would probably lose their best advertising system they have

jimbo45 said:

Hi there

the big problem is that if HOME users don't update then security loopholes etc become endemic.

An enterprise can keep reasonable control over its PC's and other resources and with some of the fees individual I.T experts can command it makes sense for them to contract out to say Ms for a fee which probably can be reclaimed back from corporation tax as some sort of business expense.

Home users are different - Ms was forced to add years to the life of XP for all sorts of reasons - but when it became impossible to patch security up any more they just pulled it.

Office 2010 is on that type of "last ditch life support" while office 2007 and office 2003 still "sort of work". The security problems in say an office suite are comparatively minor compared with a full blown OS.

I don't trust "The Daily Wail" as I see some of the UK posters call it - I like some of the "hang'em and 'Flog'em" articles in it just for sheer amusement at the Dinosaur attitudes portrayed-- amazing to see in C21 that type of journalism still commands a lot of readers. !!

However all these big companies are looking at ways to "monetise" their products - maybe this was just Ms Kite flying to see what the reaction would be.

Anyway watching the space with interest.

Cheers
jimbo

I said PREMIUM features. Security updates and normal features would still be in the free base model e.g. MS could create a new image backup tool to rival paid version of Macrium (Deities Fangs - I hope not!) but only make that available on subscription.

Presumably the business update roll-out of a given update would be delayed until its free users had helped it work through the bugs, making delivery to business users more reliable. That would make free users a sort of tertiary testbed (after MS and Insiders), thus providing a genuine service to MS.

MS would then benefit from having to employ fewer staff to handle issues raised by premium business users.

And would this premium plan be linked at all to something akin to Windows S? Could be too restrictive of course.