Windows 7 Will Be Free For a Year 528
Barence writes "Microsoft is effectively giving away Windows 7 free for a year with the launch of the Release Candidate. The Release Candidate is now available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers, and will go on unlimited, general release on 5 May. The software will not expire until 1 June 2010, giving testers more than a year's free access to Windows 7. 'It's available to as many people who see fit to use it, although we wouldn't recommend it to just your average user,' John Curran, director of the Windows Client Group told PC Pro. 'We'd very strongly encourage anyone on the beta to move to the Release Candidate.'"
Good idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good idea (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Windows a gateway drug?
Re:Good idea (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good idea (Score:5, Funny)
ME if you're lucky. MS Bob if you're not.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I also tend to think overall it is less work.
But like anything different, you just have to take the time to learn it. And when you do, it's really easy to configure and maintain.
I would bet that you started with Windows and so did all your incremental learning on Windows. Then, in switching to Linux, or taking on Linux boxes, you had a lot to learn.
I would argue that if you started with Linux and did
Death to Pirates? (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows a gateway drug?
No it's more of a Dell drug.
This is actually a wonderful idea for them. it lowers the barrier for the transition. Even companies can push their costs forward in time.
But i'm thinking of all the pirates in asia. The street vendors with virus laden bootlegs will be competing against free. this will hurt their market. Then a year later what will the chinese consumer do? He could go out an buy a bootleg and re-install his system or he could buy a keycode and continue with his current system state. in many cases the idea of re-installing a system would be daunting enough to suddenly make the key code seem cheap.
Re:Death to Pirates? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The flaw in your logic is that he would have backed up and installed this version of Windows 7, so having doe it once already I doubt whether having to do it a second time would be anything more than a day's downtime. Besides, why would he go for a lime limited official version when an unlimited cracked version would give more benefits for the same price?
Unless of course that was a funny post
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, I'll bite.
This reminds of what Bill G. said about people illegally using Windows in China. MS would rather give you the first hit free
so you get hooked. When you come crawling back for more to feed your habit then they'll charge you for it.
Sorry but MS has violated the publics trust so many times I just can't ever see anything good in their marketing attempts.
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Marketing wise, I'm not so sure it's a good idea. Even though it's labeled as "not for everybody", this same group will install it and will have a whole year to complain and destroy any credibility this thing could have had.
I think it's a silly and quite risky move on MS' part.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Bad idea? It implies:
- blogosphere ablaze with reviews. Just add a pinch of astroturfing.
- free beta testing.
- new users get familiar with the interface, it's time to move off xp.
I say this is a good move. Of course it would never have happened if linux weren't good on the desktop. Their management probably panicked seeing a flawless sidux install on hd in under 3 minutes or something like that.
Re:Good idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, it's "good on the desktop" but there are still quite a few important applications for which there is no Linux app that can do the job. This is especially true in the area of media production.
I would have switched to Linux long ago if there was any possible way I could get my work done on it. In fact, every time there's a new version of Ubuntu Studio, I try it out on a machine in my studio that's just for that purpose. And every time, I realize that there is simply no Linux substitute for the most critical apps I use. And I'm not talking about something that's so esoteric for there not to be a market. There are more than a dozen companies that produce DAW applications for Mac and/or Windows, for example: Steinberg, Cakewalk, Propellerheads, MOTU, bias, Cockos, Avid, Sony, Native Instruments, MAGIX, Ableton, and hundreds of companies who create virtual instruments to use in these DAWs.
How many of them have apps for Linux? Maybe one. How many of those apps for Linux actually work? Maybe none. Cockos' Reaper makes interesting use of Linux machines for offloading resource-hungry processes like rendering, so I can make use that Linux machine, but it is impossible for a professional media producer to use Linux exclusively. And if you're one of the hundreds of thousands of "amateur" or hobbyist media producers, which platform are you going to choose? One on which you can produce something or one on which you cannot.
A similar accounting can be had for video production. So, if Linux is going to make any inroads into this small but important market, professional developers are going to have to be persuaded to develop for Linux.
I'm a broken record about this, but there is a significant need for another professional, well-funded OS in the personal computing market. The need might not be so great if Apple were to produce an OS that was not proprietary to their own hardware. If they can make a "non-iPhone" iPhone for Verizon to sell, then they can produce a "non-Macintosh" OSX. As well capitalized and run as Apple is, they'd clobber Windows. If Apple had such an OS on the shelves last year when Vista was tanking, they would own the PC OS market today. Instead they continue to target elitists and fashionistas. They'll stay rich, god bless them, but as consumers we have to think about what we need, not just brand loyalty.
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quoting lazarus long:
"Anything free is worth what you pay for it."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
While the "gateway drug" thing is being joked about, it isn't very far off target. The first exclusivity contract was signed with manufacturers, because MS understood that once the relatively low "learning curve" was behind a user, that user is unlikely to look at the higher learning curve necessary to learn *nix.
Let us remember that MS is a "for profit" corporation. Every decision is calculated to make money in the long run. Sometimes the decision is right, sometimes it is wrong, but it is always calcul
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok... Here it goes:
1. They offer you Windows 7 RC free for a year
2. You download and upgrade your machine
3. 1 year later, the install expires and you have to purchase Windows 7
4. Microsoft sells you Windows 7 Basic for $999
5. Profit!!!
Re:Good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft doesn't need people to buy their OS. It's not like they have much of a choice anyway.
What they really need is to get people to stop replacing it with an older version, and to stop trying to get the older one on their new hardware.
Living outside the Slashdot bubble (Score:5, Interesting)
What they really need is to get people to stop replacing it with an older version, and to stop trying to get the older one on their new hardware.
Vista is approaching a 25% share of the market.
Top Operating System Share Trend [hitslink.com]
It's easy to imagine a 10% decline in XP's share and a 10% increase in Vista's share May-to-May.
The geek looks in the mirror and thinks that he is representative of the mass consumer market.
The HP desktop from WalMart is quad core and ships with 6 GB RAM and 64 Bit Vista. In six months - nine months, whatever - it will be an i7 with 9 GB RAM.
Serious horsepower at a mass market price. Mature 64 bit drivers. Win 7 just around the corner.
What's not to love?
Dual-core is Coming Soon to a netbook near you. It won't be long before XP stops making sense even at entry level.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I would argue that in today's economic climate, they really do want people to buy the OS - people are less inclined to buy new hardware at the moment and as a result, their normal market has shrunk.
Back with windows 95 and 98, they did pretty well shifting shrink wrap boxes, and I would imagine they'd like to recreate that if they can... giving a year's 'free use' seems like a fairly sane attempt to do that, especially in light of the kick back against vista.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, they do: they can stick with the Windows OS they're using now -- they don't have to upgrade. Vista's failure to penetrate the market illustrates that point. Windows' primary competition these days is itself.
In other words, Microsoft does need people to buy the
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, I didn't. Microsoft doesn't need to get people to buy their OS. But they need them to run it.
Most people don't go into a shop and buy Windows. The vast majority of OS sales are going to be from OEMs. So Microsoft loses very little by letting everybody have it for free. I'm pretty sure there will be something that will stop OEMs from taking advantage of that, so they will still pay.
What MS does desperately need is for people to want to use it. Because if people keep resisting and asking for XP, then OEMs
Re:Good idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Its about getting developers to decide that the platform is worth developing software for. If developers decide due to low market penetration that Windows 7 is as appealing to write for as Mac OS9, the money train will end and Microsoft will most likely fail as a company.
Personally, I don't consider them to be particularly relevant anymore. The exciting new technology doesn't come from Microsoft anymore, and hasn't in years...
Re:Good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I don't consider them to be particularly relevant anymore. The exciting new technology doesn't come from Microsoft anymore, and hasn't in years...
Yeah, but it's kind of hard to consider having ~90% of the market to be irrelevant. They may not be the hip new thing, but they're definitely relevant to most people.
Re:Good idea (Score:4, Informative)
Again, ~90% of the market.
If I could put that in bold 72pt flashing courier, I would. You cannot not develop for 90% of the market because you don't like their OS. This (the unwarranted elitism) is a sickness, and it's endemic to the free software community. Whether or not you like Windows/Microsoft makes precisely zero difference. If you want to be mainstream, you cater to those in the mainstream. If you want to be a pathetic niche, that's fine, nobody will stop you. But when your tunnel vision gets so strong that you equate people using the dominant PC/OS setup as "not really that relevant", you harm yourself, and you harm everyone that tries to rely on the work you do.
The web. Period. (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know what the relevant stats are to be honest, but I'm pretty sure that some 80% to 90% of software development these days is for web based apps, i.e. backend and browser. People got burnt so often by developing for propietry platforms in the past, and I don't only mean Microsoft by that, that I think that client OS development is truly becoming somewhat irrelevant.
Microsoft knows this and tried so many times to lock people into its own web platform technologies, be that ActiveX, IE, Silverlight, XAML etc. But it never worked. The web is no longer Microsoft's backyard and people are tired of being forced to either cow to Microsoft, Apple or Adobe.
Personally, I'm glad and it's abaout time.
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Re:Good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing is, I've had Vista on a testing machine since its first public beta, just so I can track the progress they're making with it. I put the first public beta of Windows 7 on my laptop and used it for a while. Both are... fine.
But then I had a problem with my laptop and so I wiped it out and reinstalled Windows XP. You know what? I didn't have any problems in downgrading. What I mean is, there wasn't anything after downgrading where I said, "Shoot, I wish I could do this, but XP doesn't have that functionality, so I need to upgrade again." At least not so far.
If Microsoft wants me to pay for an upgrade, they're going to have to show me something more than what I've seen so far.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
lagging is in the sence of
click and wait oh shit there it is..
click desktop..
click and wait oh shit there it is..
it has nothing to do with the hdd as everything it needs is cached in memory.
it has everything to do with the shiny interface being poorly written.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Except it is not free. It is no-charge for one year.
This is trial-ware. It isn't a free version of Windows.
As soon as that trial is up they will charge the users for the same amount and because very few people use a computer for just a single year the cost is the same over-all.
The word "Free" is just add jingle nothing more. Unlike FOSS where "Free" actually has a definition as in "You do not have to pay to use this software." Yes you may have to pay for training and help using the software but many peo
So close... (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
i can only imagine what the inside of windows looks like
----------
if( ::isBalmers() == true ){
throw ChairException();
}
else{
System.Win32.bsod();
}
Re:So close... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So close... (Score:5, Funny)
...waiting for blue face of death...
At least a year (Score:5, Funny)
XP Free for a year? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
If you do the ultimate, you should be able to download it.
It's for business and ultimate only, plus you need to be able to do hardware virtualization as well, so my work PC isn't able to, my boss picked the wrong processor to buy us... only one in the line that doesn't do it.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
"It's available to as many people who see fit to use it, although we wouldn't recommend it to just your average user,"
Oh, I see what you did there. By implying it's not for everyone, you're hoping to get everyone to try it so that they feel a cut above the average user. It's a far slicker move than most of Microsoft's last decade of marketing who carpet bombed the PC market to get every single person alive on windows.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Oh, I see what you did there. By implying it's not for everyone, you're hoping to get everyone to try it so that they feel a cut above the average user.
Well it works for Linux. Oh no, wait...
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Will this include XP as a VM for a year as well?
Yeah, that's about how long the poor old Pirate Bay's got left in it.
Re:XP Free for a year? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes.
"We will be soon releasing the beta of Windows XP Mode and Windows Virtual PC for Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate."
http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/business/archive/2009/04/24/coming-soon-windows-xp-mode-and-windows-virtual-pc.aspx [windowsteamblog.com]
"As part of the upcoming Windows 7 Release Candidate milestone, Microsoft will release a beta version of Windows XP Mode"
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2009/Apr09/04-28Win7QA.mspx [microsoft.com]
Brilliant Marketing Plan (Score:2)
However, Curran believes that Windows 7 has already lifted much of the negativity that surrounded its predecessor. "The positive energy and momentum is quite a bit higher than it was in the Vista timeframe," Curran conceded. "People are excited about Windows 7."
Turn people off to Vista, then when they think you are done and they will never run anything Microsoft again, turn out a decent OS, or at least one better than the one before. Nothing makes this look better than how bad Vista looks.
its not free (Score:2, Informative)
MSDN and technet require very expensive subscriptions (never mind the absurdity of paying to test another companies apps)
and does this apply to the public beta testers who dont have the luxury of handing over thousands to test Microsofts apps ?
Re:its not free (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Let me just quote the comments from this thread:
MSDN and technet require very expensive subscriptions
Technet is 349.00 for the first year / 249.00 per year after that. That isn't expensive.
You counter his argument that it is not free by pointing out it is MERELY 250 bucks a year...
Who would have thought FREE would become such a complex concept to some people.
I don't know where you've seen the word "free" in GGP, because it wasn't there. He said "expensive". $250/year is hardly expensive, but that's beside the point anyway, since it's not what you've taken issue with.
Please mod parent Offtopic.
Re:its not free (Score:5, Informative)
The public beta will be out May 5th [winsupersite.com]. Paying for MSDN or Technet gets you early access. I wouldn't have a Technet account except my work got it as part of their MS license deal.
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Ballmer's strategy (Score:5, Interesting)
This could be Ballmer's strategy against Linux as he repeatedly has said that you can't beat Linux' price.
With this they will surely retain the market share, in a recession, for an otherwise very expensive product; it costs more than one third of a new pc.
Re:Ballmer's strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's more likely that this is Ballmer's strategy against his own failings with Vista.
They're in desperate need of getting people off XP - it's starting to show it's age from marketing point of view and I'm sure MS would like to move to a new technological platform as well.
It's also nice to see they've really looked at things that went wrong with Vista launch - I don't think they really can afford to bomb Windows 7 launch.
Re:Ballmer's strategy (Score:4, Insightful)
Or Microsoft accurately recognizes that a vast majority of their revenue is from OEM bundles and is willing to take an extremely small hit from a million or so computer geeks who know how to download, burn and install a product they'll have to reinstall in 12 months.
Either you stop using it and wouldn't have payed them anyway, or you buy it and they get your money eventually anyway. Either way they lose no money.
Errr.. (Score:2)
It's available to as many people who see fit to use it, although we wouldn't recommend it to just your average user
If this is a release candidate, they are basically admitting the end product won't be for the "average user".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Ah, I see.
So basically, it isn't a release candidate as there is no chance of it being released 'as is'.
No wonder people don't trust their programming, they can't even get the terminology right.
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So basically, it isn't a release candidate as there is no chance of it being released 'as is'.
Dude, as someone that downloaded the Kubuntu 9.04 RC then apt-get'd to the release a week later I can tell you there was a snowflake's chance in hell it'd be released "as-is". While I'm sure most of the changes were minor, there were tons of packages that were updated. After a release you have patching going on and I find it very natural that the same happens between RC and release, even more so to get patches in before the release. Even if a beta release was feature complete something it rarely is, there t
isn't this SOP for Windows pre-releases and betas? (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't see what's new here. So the latest version will self destruct in one year, then what? Or maybe they are releasing it to the public instead of leaking it like they normally do?
Nothing here, move along. Move along. IMO.
LoB
Free with "minor" caveats (Score:5, Insightful)
"Microsoft is effectively giving away Windows 7 free for a year with the launch of the Release Candidate.
It's only free if you don't value bug fixes, security updates, product support and potentially all manner of issues installing software that will be released for Windows 7 RTM on a pre-release version no-one will have done significant product testing on and won't care to help you with if you run into problems.
Keeping all this in mind, and the fact this is pre-release development code, it's not hard to see why this release is free. I do find it odd that it's got such a generous expiration date, but approaching this as a free (time-limited) lunch is probably a fairly bad idea for all the reasons above.
If you like it, but don't want to pay for it, just pirate it. You'll be better off, and so may many others when they don't have to worry about your compromised box congesting their network, because it was exploited by a flaw MS has no intention of fixing in pre-release code.
Free? (Score:2)
Are Microsoft trying the Linux business model? LOL
Like the old gag about the change bank says.. (Score:2)
Let's ask the experts (Score:2)
So, free Windows 7 for a year? What would Frank, the Homeless Guy [youtube.com] say about that?
Personally I'm going to hold out for Blake's 7 instead.
You've got to love this (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You've got to love this (Score:5, Funny)
Man, that's something to look forward to...
Re:You've got to love this (Score:5, Funny)
"We were able to shave 400 milliseconds off the shutdown time
BRILLIANT!
That will easily save me.... let's see... um... (google math)... 7.2 seconds in the coming year! YES! Time enough for sex!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Competing with themselves. (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly, I don't know if it'll work. Windows XP works fine. It's an operating system. All it has to do is run applications and manage resources. It does that well enough for most people and corporations, so why switch?
Dope? (Score:2, Interesting)
Why such moronic ititles and summaries? (Score:5, Interesting)
They're not giving you Windows 7 for free. They allow anyone to use a beta version of Windows 7 for one year. And, yes, RC is still beta. Microsoft has admitted that they falsely and intentionally label the last few betas as RCs to make hardware vendors to test their hardware and write proper drivers before a RTM build is created.
The only purpose of this /. submission is to make money on ads or something I suppose (I didn't follow any link, I confess, as I don't follow misleading and moronic articles).
What makes this new? (Score:3, Informative)
Um, they did the same thing with Vista. The RC was public and came with a year expiration also.
Not only that, but going to the launch expos they had across the country, they passed out free Vista "RTM" discs (confusing because it was not the actual OEM or retail disc) with another year license (plus a full license to Office 2k7).
You know you failed... (Score:5, Funny)
...when you give something away for free, and people don't want it anyway. ^^
(Ignore their obviously coming "OMFG! It sells like crazy!!1!one(lim x->0 ((sin x)/x))" messages. They did that with Vista too. And look how it turned out.)
Wake me up when... (Score:3, Interesting)
I installed it a couple of days ago. (Score:3, Informative)
I'm quite impressed with it.
It's a huge step up from vista.
I particularly like the action center.
they already had me.. (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft already had me at "Mark Russinovich is windows 7 principal architect".
I was given that 'june 1st' date, but it was supposed to be june 1st 2009, not 2010.
Background goes black on june 1st, and starting july 1st, reboot each two hours. (insert bluescreen joke here)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Your 4-year-old's account shouldn't have administrator access.
If you gave his account administrator access, neither should you.
Re:Offline Gaming machine (Score:5, Funny)
Your 4-year-old's account shouldn't have administrator access.
If you gave his account administrator access, neither should you.
Funny you should say that. A while ago I took my four year old daughter to a museum, and let her play with a touch-screen information terminal. In a couple of seconds she (somehow) had control panel up! It may take a thousand monkeys a million years to write Shakespeare, but it seems to take ten seconds for a four-year old to find any "backdoor access" or other options that should not be available.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
First you say:
I see absolutely no problem
and then you say:
I ended up an engineer
Seems like a dire enough consequence to me.
Time traveling in Animal Crossing (Score:2)
So if I wanted to build an offline gaming machine for my 4 year old, I just have to keep setting the data backwards.
If by "data" you mean "date", you break games whose rules depend on the calendar. I don't know of any specific titles like this on Windows, but one on GameCube, DS, and Wii is the Animal Crossing series.
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I used to take an even more conservative approach before I stopped using Windows. I would wait for the beta of the next OS to come out before moving to the last one. Generally that signaled that the old release was actually stable. I was actually fairly happy w/Win2k, but I'm a lot happier with Ubuntu.
Re:Fascinating (Score:5, Insightful)
Unsuccessful troll is unsuccessful.
Re:Fascinating (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Fascinating (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fascinating (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this not-switching thing won't happen. 7 is worlds better than that steaming pile o'Vista.
It's actually fast, as crazy as this sounds.
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One more reason why every family computer geek should stress the importance of regular backups, especially before taking major steps like upgrading one's operating system.
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If I install Windows 7 RC on anything, it'll be a virtual machine. If I get downgraded, I just kill the VM, and no harm done.
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Who doesn't keep all their data on a seperate drive these days? I mean yeah I download crap to the desktop to filter later, but anything I might keep for more than 60 days is immediately saved to the D: drive. Virus? No problem, just reinstall windows + specific apps. 2 hours down the drain, but you know your virus problem is nixed. Windows 7 RC expired? Just re-install XP.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Well then I guess you should have kept all your files secretly backed up on your C, E and F drives along with terrestrial and orbital off site backups. I recommend two satellites orbiting on opposite sides of the earth, that way your data is less likely to be corrupted in the event of solar flares(!).
Re:Fishing (Score:4, Informative)
*sigh*
At least pick an addictive drug next time.
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:Fishing (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:no thanks! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How about instead of saying "Unknown Partition", make a driver that allows read access to the FS drivers in the linux kernel?
MS: Linux may have been good for you, but we provide you the tools to migrate your data back to a "Complete MS Solution". We support all fileystems that Linux can read and write to, along with BASH scripting and posix programs by default. We also run a Linux compat layer, like BSD, so we can run native ELF executables without changing.
but no.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think I see a parrallel between the way the media is covering the Swine Flu and how Linux users cover Windows stories
You may have a point, but using an analogy that involves virus outbreaks while advocating a Gentler and Kinder perspective on Windows stories may not have been the right approach.
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3d Exceleration.
I just died a little inside...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Give a regular user a choice between free* Windows and Free* Linux, and they will choose Windows in a heartbeat.
This is designed to get users to upgrade from WinXP to Win7 and not to Linux
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The RC is only available via TechNet/MSDN until Tuesday. After that it's available to the general public.
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they are not giving Windows 7 for free. /. can't seem to write decent titles.