Microsoft Windows 10 (Free)? Progress or Bust?

In the last couple of days their has been a lot of buzz in the IT community about Windows 10. Rumor has it this Operating system will be FREE for the first year. I know why name it windows 10? What about 9? Rumor has it they were concerned about the confusion with windows 9 and windows 98.

In addition from my understanding this Operating system will be Free for the first year for those of you who have legit windows 7 or windows 8 licensing. You will be able to install this operating system on your specific device for the lifetime of that device.

Is this a smart move by Microsoft? Does this mean they are going to start a subscription based model? I am not for sure we will just need to wait and see.

Windows 10 is Microsoft’s make-or-break operating system and Microsoft needs to do everything it can to kick-start adoption and move PC customers on. If Windows 10 goes wrong and people don’t upgrade, that’ll be two Windows busts in succession. That would be terrible for business and for Microsoft.

Consumers and businesses both flatly rejected Windows 8.x, with the latter picking Windows 7 as their post Windows XP PC platform of choice.

Windows 7 is now six years old with its end-of-support date penciled in for 2020. If Windows 10 also doesn’t progress their success, and assuming Microsoft takes another two years to release the next version of Windows  it’ll be 2017 before the company gets another attempt at trying to persuade potential customers into their product.

Now the bad news

Windows 10 is going to be free – for a while. That’s really bad news for PC makers and channel partners. New versions of Windows and sales of new PCs go hand in hand, as the new operating system is either too fat or uses features missing in existing hardware.

Microsoft hasn’t said what PC hardware you’ll need to run Windows 10 but with its free upgrade, Microsoft obviously believes PCs running Windows 7 and Windows 8.x have already necessary hardware to make Windows 10 work.

PC hardware refresh has been a major hurdle in recent tech history: a reason companies have been slow to dump Windows XP has been IT directors unwillingness to pay for the new PCs that can run Windows 7. Putting Windows 10 on the same PCs as Windows 7 helps Microsoft navigate that hurdle; getting Windows 10 becomes a simple matter of download and corporate IT strategy.

Microsoft needs market share for two reasons: to make decent money from Windows 10 licenses at some point in the future and get more Windows 10 devices in the field that let people swallow subscription cloud services, like Office 365.

It’s maybe a risky move on  Microsoft’s part but we will see if this grows their their marketshare back in the desktop operating system world.

For a free tech preview download of windows 10 you can click here.