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Windows 10 to be a free upgrade to Windows 7 and 8.1 users with lifetime support
Neil Roy
Member #2,229
April 2002
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Looks very interesting! I tried out Windows 10 and I liked it. It ran my Allegro 5 game no problem. Free upgrade with lifetime support sounds pretty good, I'll probably go for it.

http://www.techspot.com/news/59474-microsoft-windows-10-event-announcements.html

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“I love you too.” - last words of Wanda Roy

furinkan
Member #10,271
October 2008
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Free... for the first year. Windows is a service now.

I think that adoption will be sky high in the corporate realm, but home users will quickly come to see the merits of free things. ;D

iOS is free with your device, Droid is free, Mac OS is free with device, Linux is free, BSD is free. If anyone was sitting on the fence to begin with, having to pay for a service will push them the rest of the way.

This is M$ grasping for straws trying to keep their monopoly, and I can't wait for them to get what's coming to them.

Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
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furinkan said:

Windows is a service now.

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.

video

If that happens, and as Windows 7 is depreciated, I will officially be Linux only. I absolutely abhor, and refuse them taking that last piece of control we have over our computers.

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
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Microsoft is no longer relevant and they're trying desperately to get users back. They can exploit you to advertisers and vendors once they have you so the up-front cost of the license is negligible. And of course, this is basically going to be Windows 7 AKA Windows 8.1 with more UI tweaks. It took them about 5 years after the release of XP before they released Vista (and there are still people happily running XP today). Now they've gone Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, and now 10 in the space of about 9 years. Basically a new release every 3 years or so. Of course, these aren't actually new releases. Windows 7 was Windows Vista with the drivers and UAC situation fixed. Windows 8 was Windows 7 (which was Windows Vista with drivers and UAC fixed) with a forced touch interface similar to tablets and phones. Windows 8.1 was a minor update to Windows 8 with the touch UI being less forced, but only slightly. Windows 10 is going to be Windows 8.1 with a big version bump, a revised UI building on the 8.1 update to bring the familiar desktop back, and probably the integration of a ton of proprietary "services" that will spy on you and exploit you for profit. Take a peek at the release history.

beoran
Member #12,636
March 2011

More relevant for Allegro is DirectX 12... although my expectations of DirectX are low, maybe some improvements have been made???

furinkan
Member #10,271
October 2008
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To what end? Nothing in DX 12 that GL can't do. Nothing in Windows that Linux doesn't do better. Now you actually have to pay outright to get screwed. ::)

pkrcel
Member #14,001
February 2012

Microsoft is still relevant, not yet those six feet under anything.

But still, alternatives are attractive and competition is fierce and Microsoft is NO LONGER "setting any standard", this is a fact.

To the contrary, they are DEFINITELY giving away examples of what shoud NOT be done (might be kind of a trendsetting thing all of its own... :P)

And DX will still be a de-facto standard for gaming industry for years to come, even thou GL can do anything DX does, even having had the impression that 4.0 might also be a LOT better.

I see a big shift possible only in the consumer market, where Apple might erode a fair share of the personal computing market, or better...what crumbles might beleft of THAT market.

I strongly hope Valve and his views will explode and change the face of consumer gaming for good.

Any new version of windows is no big news lately, and rightly so.

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StevenVI
Member #562
July 2000
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Are there any killer features that Windows 10 will offer that aren't already in Windows 7?

When I switched from WinXP to Win7 back in 2009, my reasoning was "it's free, and if I don't like it I can go back to XP." I enjoyed it enough that I bought a license for Win7. (It's nice having an income and finally being able to pay for things. :o) When you break it all down though, there's really only one feature of Win7 that I use regularly which wasn't part of XP: Pressing the Windows key and typing the name of the program you want to run. I used to simulate this sort of thing with the run menu, but it was much more difficult.

Skimming the link, I couldn't tell what were features and what were other products also being discussed. But I really don't think that a new start menu is going to help me be more productive. As it is I already only spend about a second finding the programs I want to run.

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Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
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Quote:

Windows search

Too bad it only works when it works and you have to have the exactly correct wording. I have Windows 8 at work and it takes 99% CPU to run the indexer on our crappy work computers. Even then, if you type it something, it just sits there or gives up. UNLESS you type something and do something like name + press space, or some stupid combination thereof. Sometimes it'll find ABCDEF with "ABCD" but not "ABC" or "ABCDEF". You cannot rely on it to tell you whether a file is actually in a directory or not. I've searched for *.EXTENSION dozens of times and found it only returned a few of them when I knew the file was in there.

The shortcut can literally be in the start menu, front and center under recent links, and if I type it letter-for-letter "DFX" it gives up.

Windows search indexer also searches INSIDE files so a simple search for "my file" will end up taking ridiculously long as it searches and indexes every time "my file" is in any file any where on the hard drive. They make no distinction between searching for a file name and what's inside. It's ridiculous. >:(

Don't forget, Windows 10 is supposed to be highlighting file level DRM. That is, it locks into the file open / save / save as buttons and prevents you from saving files that it decides you don't have DRM access to. And that DRM can apply to anything. A text file. An mp3. It can and will be set at the Active Directory domain controller. So when you can't open a file you should be able to access--if your IT crew is dumb or restrained by even dumber management--enjoy sending a support ticket and waiting for three hours to use that USB drive you brought from home with the files you need. Say absolute goodbye to productivity and autonomy, as you are no longer trusted with the actions of your computer.

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

Neil Roy
Member #2,229
April 2002
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furinkan said:

Free... for the first year. Windows is a service now.

Yeah, that's the only part that had me a little worried. Will there be an annual fee now? Also, with that wording it no longer is YOUR operating system but it belongs to them. So... I doubt I will jump on the bandwagon, it does seem nice enough at first glance, but some of the wording does bother me.

I do prefer Windows over Linux though, but I can see the day coming when I may not have much of a choice but to go Linux all the way. I honestly don't do as much on my computer as I used to do, I have become quite bored with it. I have spend a good part of my life around computers, since they first came out. I am finally growing tired of them. I mainly just browse the web, watch videos on it (because I hate TV) and a little programming so Linux may not be such a difficult move in the long run after all for me.

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“I love you too.” - last words of Wanda Roy

Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
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I just talked to one of my brother's in IT. He told me that the Microsoft devs, on Reddit no less, were discussing it and it's literally "free upgrade for ever, as long as you do it within one year of launch."

I've got some crappy, unused Windows 8 keys I bought for $15, so I'll check it out. But I hate how Windows tiers work, where the basic editions don't even include things like task manager. (Let that sink in for a minute!)

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

furinkan
Member #10,271
October 2008
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What do you mean? They took task manager away? When? What version!?

Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
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I'm having trouble finding any mention of it. I recall very vividly helping someone with their computer growing up with either XP, or Vista and their computer simply did not have task manager. I asked what the heck was going on and found they had an ultra-low version of Windows. I really wish I could find a source to back that up since it otherwise detracts from my point. :-/

Completely Side-note: These "Removed Features" pages (Windows 7, Windows 8) are pretty interesting read. Meanwhile, on Linux, if you look back 20 years, you can still basically use everything AFAIK. This must be an absolute nightmare for the Wine project, as well as anyone who writes system level code for Microsoft (be it drivers, or OS extensions like Windows Fences).

And I say all this, as I use a Windows 7 machine. My point is not that I hate Microsoft, but rather that I feel the path that Microsoft (and Apple!) are taking are very bad for the user who enjoys control of his or her PC. I find it strange to find myself sounding more and more like Richard Stallman, whom I have no beef with, but have always felt him to be too militant.

[edit] I forgot to mention, I got off the phone with my brother in IT. He's very much for the new DRM, as it will very much limit the amount of damage complete morons can do to a computer system and I have to agree. But I'm still weary of bad IT, or bad management over IT, because company's that understand computers are extremely rare, and bureaucracy is prevalent. So to empower companies to throw shackles around their intelligent users because the CEO watched a stupid video from Microsoft's marketers one day, has huge potential for destroying even more productivity for actual developers.

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

jmasterx
Member #11,410
October 2009

For the FS DRM thing, can't you just write a filesystem driver that bypasses the drm and remove the default one?

Gideon Weems
Member #3,925
October 2003

Windows users with lifetime support? Pssh, more like Windows users ON LIFE SUPPORT.

... Anyone made that joke before?

Crazy Photon
Member #2,588
July 2002
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If that happens, and as Windows 7 is depreciated, I will officially be Linux only. I absolutely abhor, and refuse them taking that last piece of control we have over our computers.

Yeah, I have been doing that so myself, now the only reason I might boot to Windows is to use IE for testing some stuff (and I might start using a VM for that so that I don't need to reboot).

I might move away from Mac OS X for similar reasons too, although I heard that linux support for MacBook Pros are kind of hit and miss.

I also took the chance to use Arch Linux which I hadn't yet, so far very happy with it (though now I can see how some people dislike systemd).

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Resistance is NEVER futile...

Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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Hm, I think the windows starter edition is missing a lot of features, probably even the task manager. It is so stripped down its crazy. But it often comes free (if you bundle things like office eval, and shit) or very cheap to OEMs.

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Neil Roy
Member #2,229
April 2002
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Yeah, it's sounding like this really is a free version, in which case I will go for it. I mean, what other choice is there? You don't upgrade and eventually support drops for the current OS? If I don't like it, than I will either re-install the old version or more likely just install Linux. But I do prefer Windows over Linux, at least at this time I do anyhow though I liked what I seen when I tried out the various flavours of Ubuntu (Kubuntu being my favourite) so I could see myself using it, especially when I don't even do a lot with my computer these days. Programming using Allegro and Code::Blocks wouldn't change too much under Linux, that is one good thing about using this library. It's just getting used to the Linux file system etc... for me anyhow.

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“I love you too.” - last words of Wanda Roy

l j
Member #10,584
January 2009
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Hm, I think the windows starter edition is missing a lot of features, probably even the task manager. It is so stripped down its crazy.

Perhaps so, but wasn't it targeted at customers in new PC markets as their first OS? I don't think it was supposed to be used in first world countries.

Crazy Photon
Member #2,588
July 2002
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It was not that bad (on Windows 7 Starter at least), there are tools/hacks to change various settings, e.g. desktop background; and Process Explorer is better than task manager anyways.

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Resistance is NEVER futile...

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
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I can't find any official reference to this so called "Windows 10 DRM layer". Where is that coming from?

Peter Hull
Member #1,136
March 2001

bamccaig said:

Microsoft is no longer relevant and they're trying desperately to get users back.

This sentiment gets expressed a lot but I've yet to see any data that suggest Windows has any less than 90% of the desktop OS share.
What is true:

  • they don't and never have had much of the 'mobile' market.

  • they can't be lazy and assume that users are safely locked in.

Interesting times ahead!

[edit] - I'm not a Windows/MS fan - been using Macs since the nineteen eighties, when given the choice...

furinkan
Member #10,271
October 2008
avatar

They're losing platform penetration, they're failing to lock users in, and the floundering desktop market is quickly becoming their only safe-haven.

I don't think this is the end, but they're continuing their wonderful downward trajectory. ;D They'll be about as relevant as IBM here in a decade or two; I don't think they'll ever get back to being the behemoth they were.

Matthew Leverton
Supreme Loser
January 1999
avatar

furinkan said:

Free... for the first year. Windows is a service now.

Within the first year that Windows 10 is released, it will be a free upgrade from 7.

That doesn't mean you have to pay to use it after a year. Once you install it, it's yours. Microsoft will never remove or prevent you from using the (legally installed) version of Windows that's on your computer.

The "do it within a year" is likely a gimmick to try to get people to upgrade faster than they usually do.

Long term, I think they will try to get you to subscribe to a service to get "free" Windows updates for duration of that service, along with some other incentives. (e.g., An Amazon Prime type of thing.) You might get 100GB of cloud storage + Windows updates for $x/year.

Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
avatar

Long term, I think they will try to get you to subscribe to a service to get "free" Windows updates for duration of that service, along with some other incentives. (e.g., An Amazon Prime type of thing.) You might get 100GB of cloud storage + Windows updates for $x/year.

My brother thinks they're going to follow Apple's successful model of charging small fees every year for a new incremental release.

bamccaig:

This is not the original post I read, I'm still tracking that down:

The first is a set of information-protection capabilities that make it possible to protect corporate data even on employee-owned devices. Windows 10, the company says, will allow network administrators to define policies that automatically encrypt sensitive information, including corporate apps, data, email, and the contents of intranet sites.

Because support for this encryption will be built into the APIs for common Windows controls, such as Open and Save dialog boxes, it will be available to all Windows apps that use those controls. For tighter security, administrators can create lists of apps that are allowed to access encrypted data as well as those that are denied access--a network administrator might choose to deny access to cloud services such as Dropbox, for example.

THATS WHY I CAN'T FIND IT, the Microsoft guy who blogged about it removed it a day later!

Oliver Niehus, a Microsoft Principal Application Development Manager for Windows and Security, posted about some of the Windows 10 security, privacy and management features on his MSDN blog on October 1. By October 2, that post had been removed. But not before I got to do a little cutting and pasting.

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

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