Microsoft Confirms Windows 10 New Monthly Charge

Forbes ^ | July14, 2016 | Gordon Kelly

[upchuck]

For months Microsoft has been describing Windows 10 “as a service” and now we know why. Microsoft is going to introduce a monthly subscription fee for Windows 10 usage…

That cost will be $7 per user per month but the good news is it only applies to enterprises, for now. The new pricing tier will be called “Windows 10 Enterprise E3” and it means Windows has finally joined Office 365 and Azure as a subscription service.

Of course the big question is now: How does this new subscription pricing affect the millions of consumers who upgraded to Windows 10 on the promise of it being free?

The good news is Microsoft has gone on record to say it is not being passed down to consumers at this stage: “This new subscription model is not associated with our current upgrade offering or applicable to the Windows 10 consumer edition,” a Microsoft spokesperson told PC World.

Could Microsoft eventually introduce Windows 10 monthly subscriptions for consumers? Without doubt, but I would be highly sceptical they would apply to anyone who has already upgraded. That said there is likely to be a threshold in future where Microsoft will draw a line in the sand for the ongoing addition of new features without a fee.

[DannyTN]

Yes, and I got a lot of serious answers in reply. Glad somebody got it.

[Bikkuri]

However, don’t expect Open Source software to support all the features of the latest hardware. That’s always been a big downside of many desktop distributions of Linux.


I've been running Mint KDE since about 2007 (started Linux about 2000)... Since I started using Mint in 2007, I think I only had 1 issue on a laptop with a driver (which updated maybe 2 weeks later)... Overall, all needed drivers were installed during installation and I have never since had any problems... and Linux was installed on laptop or PC within 20 minutes (and already upgraded).. ;^)

[Bikkuri]

CS6 here (on VBox Win10)..

[Bikkuri]

It took me a bit to remember.. but, it seems the formulas from Excel work in LibreOffice Calc.. and I can save as Excel ;^)

Working on a new sheet that takes over 7 pages that refers back to the first page (TAB) (just like Excel) :D

[Bikkuri]

Mint (cinnamon if you want pretty and simple; Mate if you want easy and secure.... KDE if you want to be able to have control of your PC WITH the ability to make pretty, if you want ;[)..

[Bikkuri]

LibreOffice offers saving options to many different version of Excel... I have tested each one, and I haven’t had a problem with any.. and I am very ‘formula’ oriented...

[GingisK]

Cloud based? Monthly/yearly rental? I won’t accept that.

[Bikkuri]

CS6 is PRE- monthly (PRE-cloud)... and is far as I will go.. I don’t play that crud :p
I am old fashioned and don’t trust my stuff on an online server. I THINK the monthly starts after CS8, not 100% sure though. CS6 is plenty powerful enough for me to last a LONG time though ;D

On the other hand, someone above thread mentioned a good idea to encrypt data before it’s sent to cloud... I may do that eventually. Id you’re talking about WIN 10, It is not connected to the net from inside the Virtual Box (and I didn’t pay for it, although I downloaded the ISO directly from MS itself :D)

[Bikkuri]

Previous versions of Linux, I relied on Play on Linux.. but it became easier to look up what I needed for a particular app/game on winehq and install from console. One of the nice things about PoL, is that it saved a different (the needed) version of wine for each and every app/game, but took up that much space on the HDD (which I need all space I can get since I am now running only on laptop :/)

[Bob434]

[[But there is a learning curve especially for substitute programs for video and photo editing programs that don’t have the same level of support and documentation as their Windows counterparts.]]

No learning curve needed- dual boot- I run both windows 10 and windows 7 in a triple boot scenario- both my windows are very very rarely allowed access to internet- and are mostly just for running windows only programs or games- I get all my internet stuff done on linux- then at end of evening i reboot into windows, do my photoshop work (I do photography and psot process them) and then right before bed reboot back into linux and suspend for evening-

For the windows programs i want to use without the minor hassel of rebootign to windows, I run them in virtual machines running windows- (I even have phtooshop in a VM just so i don’t have to keep rebooting whenever I mgiht want to do photoshop work quickly)

My computer works far less hard when running linux- the fans very seldom ramp up and sound like they are abotu to explode- but when i boot to windows 7- oh my word- the machine just sounds like it wants to explode- windows 10 is better- but still works the computer a lot harder than the linux system does for some reason-

Anyway- I tried gimp in linux- nope- not for me- photoshop is still king- so i had to find solution- triple boot was the answer- as was virtualbox for quick photoshop work-

[fireman15]

Thanks for the input. I tried Photoshop in a virtual environment previously and did not have great results, but I may not have set up the environment as well as I should have. I will give it another try. I do hope someone comes up with a good Linux solution for my little Nextbook Flex10. There is suppose to be some progress being made according to the forums.

[Bob434]

[[I am old fashioned and don’t trust my stuff on an online server.]]

From what i understand, adobe holds your work done in the cloud hostage until you pay their monthly extortion fee- that is one of the main reasons i never went with it- they lock your photos so that you can’t edit them again until you pay if you miss payment- or so it was back in the day they went to hte cloud- 0don’t know if that has changed or not- in essence, they steal your work IF you don’t pay again-

[[It is not connected to the net from inside the Virtual Box (and I didn’t pay for it, although I downloaded the ISO directly from MS itself :D)]]

If you didn’t activate it, like i didn’t- there is a workaround to bypass the annoying ‘activate now’ crud they stick on your computer- and it will allow you to customize windows 10 without activation too i believe- found it on youtube-

open notepad type in

@echo off
taskkill /F /IM explorer.exe
explorer.exe

Save as .bat

double click the .bat file you created- and the activation watermark will be gone

[Bob434]

i tried photoshop in virtual machine and it ran terrible- then i tried it in virtualbox, and it runs very well- but you have to have ‘guest editions’ installed in the virtual machine (or tools or whatever additions virtualbox calls it) so that the 3d works- it runs really pretty well in virtualbox- coudl never get it to run good in virtual machine though