News Windows 9 a free upgrade, claims Microsoft executive

Surely it should be those still using Xp, Vista and win7 that M$ should be prioritising to encourage to upgrade ...at least this time round... to get rid of all those legacy costs and security issues.

Win 8/8.1 users would get freebie priority next time with win10.

 

It would seem sensible to me to make at least one free version (Windows Home ) then offer a Home Premium at a reasonable charge (<£50 retail or less to OEM's) Then continue to charge similar rates to what they do now for Professional etc.

That way you get something out of the big OEM's (Dell etc.) as pretty much all but there cheapest machines will come with Home premium and continue to make good money from large corporate /Enterprise and it also pretty much eliminates software piracy in the "home" market.

 

Do enterprise users get this quick release stuff or are they on another track? windows sysadmin guys must be grumpy at this apple esq upgrade cycle..

 

I'm not sure Microsoft cares anymore about the Windows sysadmin guys, just like when they got distracted from Windows as a gaming platform and abandoned that idea, they have now been distracted by a new shiny thing.

The enterprise sector is going to play second fiddle going forward because Microsoft is chasing after mobile computing now.

 

So I just grab free win 8.1 from my uni and then just uograde it to win 9 you say? Tempting, very tempting...

 

They don't care about the new releases, Windows 7 is the milestone release for enterprise and will be for a long time.

 

Well that’s not true. I can confirm my old office was doing a trial run with it. And BT use it on their tablets and PC's so its being used. Enterprises are considering it.

Just not sure they will like this rapid release cycle, and whether MS cares about them as much is another question.

Im actually a Linux sys admin just thinking from an IT perspective.

 

Getting a 502 bad gateway to the article

Scratch that after a few refreshes it worked.

 

You'd be right, with the exception of 2 things:
1. MS is trying to sweep Windows 8 under the rug, so the faster they do this the better.
2. XP, Vista, and 7 users making the upgrade would end up being their main source of profit. If upgrading was free for everyone, where would MS get any money out of this?

I don't really care either way. I have Windows 8.1 so I'll make the upgrade because it's there. But if it weren't freely available to me, I probably wouldn't get it. The only reason I'm running 8.1 is because I basically got a free 8.0 license.

 

It should just accept W8 keys tbh. I would get annoyed if I had to install 8, update to 8.1, then onto 9 :/

 

Do a clean install then image it before installing any drivers? Besides, I'm sure some clever bugger will figure out a slipstream method.

Seriously though, free? Yeah, OK, and the release date will be 1/4/15

 

Maybe a "cheap switchover" scheme like with Win8?

Only make it ore public this time? Or offer it for standart on all those XP machines out there?

If you have any leftover keys, I'd take one (if only to upgrade to Win9)

 

cheap upgrades from win7 apparently - something like £25? they did a similar offer for upgrading from winxp to windows 8

 

Yah I missed that one

 

pretty sure its a free AD-Supported version...
and you still have to pay for standard edition and pro edition