Windows 10 [2018]

[Eolirin]

How would not allowing upgrades screw them over ? Windows is a one time cost . Windows 10 is going to be 6 years old in July. $100-200 for an optional purchase is not the end of the world

Because many of those systems would have been put together in the lead up to release too, and aren't going to be replaced any time soon; that one time cost will have just been paid in full for new systems and the lack of easy access to transistioning to the new OS will prevent the lighting up of functionality around that hardware. It's questionable to me if Windows 10 gets direct storage now or if that becomes a Windows 11 exclusive feature, for instance. If I just spent 2k on a system only to find that there was no upgrade path to get full use out of my nvme drives I'd be annoyed. Especially since that restriction would be transparently artificial and clearly unnecessary.

If it has a cost at all, it better be like the historical way this has been handled, with cheaper upgrade licenses and a clear method for in place upgrades. There's absolutely no benefit to making it harder for people on older systems that are still good enough that they aren't going to hold features back from moving to the most recent version of the OS. Anything else can get covered by a change to min spec.

 

[eastmen]

Because many of those systems would have been put together in the lead up to release too, and aren't going to be replaced any time soon; that one time cost will have just been paid in full for new systems and the lack of easy access to transistioning to the new OS will prevent the lighting up of functionality around that hardware. It's questionable to me if Windows 10 gets direct storage now or if that becomes a Windows 11 exclusive feature, for instance. If I just spent 2k on a system only to find that there was no upgrade path to get full use out of my nvme drives I'd be annoyed. Especially since that restriction would be transparently artificial and clearly unnecessary.

If it has a cost at all, it better be like the historical way this has been handled, with cheaper upgrade licenses and a clear method for in place upgrades. There's absolutely no benefit to making it harder for people on older systems that are still good enough that they aren't going to hold features back from moving to the most recent version of the OS. Anything else can get covered by a change to min spec.

I don't see the issue. Companies release new products all the time without update paths. When you purchase anything you should purchase for what it is not what you hope it will be in the future.

When you purchase a ps4 a month befor a ps5 is released what is the upgrade path there ? When you purchase a car and there is a new model year that comes out a month later what is the upgrade path ?

Its an OS you either stay with windows 10 or purchase windows 11.

 

[Eolirin]

I don't see the issue. Companies release new products all the time without update paths. When you purchase anything you should purchase for what it is not what you hope it will be in the future.

When you purchase a ps4 a month befor a ps5 is released what is the upgrade path there ? When you purchase a car and there is a new model year that comes out a month later what is the upgrade path ?

Its an OS you either stay with windows 10 or purchase windows 11.

Windows has never worked this way, and it's not like a situation with new hardware. If the exact same device ships with two different versions of an OS, and the only difference between the two is what month they shipped in, and there's an existing and robust way to provide an update to the new OS and the company simply chooses not to do it, that's really messed up. If they want to charge the 50 bucks for an upgrade license, okay. It'll slow adoption, but that's fair. But to simply be like, yeah, you can't use this on your existing install even though it'll run it just fine and if you really want to you can erase your hard drive to work around it, even though we very definitely have the technology necessary to do an upgrade in place? That's pretty insane.

I know when a next gen system (or car) is coming out over a year ahead of time. I know roughly how long it'll be before a replacement will hit for a device that's years old. I can do a trade in at my local store to reduce the cost of the new thing (or I can lease a car instead of purchasing). I'm able to make an informed decision around obsolescence. I'm able to recoup some of the cost of the older version.

MS has promised free upgrades to Windows 10 for the life of the device. That gives them an out for min spec bumps. But even if we treat Windows 11 as not being bound by the free updates aspect of Windows 10, which may be fair, the entire history of Windows has been one with an upgrade path. It would be blindsiding in many ways for that to not be there at all.

The OS being upgradable on appropriate hardware is part of the expected functionality of the product. It would be missing a feature if it shipped without it.

 

[eastmen]

Windows has never worked this way, and it's not like a situation with new hardware. If the exact same device ships with two different versions of an OS, and the only difference between the two is what month they shipped in, and there's an existing and robust way to provide an update to the new OS and the company simply chooses not to do it, that's really messed up. If they want to charge the 50 bucks for an upgrade license, okay. It'll slow adoption, but that's fair. But to simply be like, yeah, you can't use this on your existing install even though it'll run it just fine and if you really want to you can erase your hard drive to work around it, even though we very definitely have the technology necessary to do an upgrade in place? That's pretty insane.

I know when a next gen system (or car) is coming out over a year ahead of time. I know roughly how long it'll be before a replacement will hit for a device that's years old. I can do a trade in at my local store to reduce the cost of the new thing (or I can lease a car instead of purchasing). I'm able to make an informed decision around obsolescence. I'm able to recoup some of the cost of the older version.

MS has promised free upgrades to Windows 10 for the life of the device. That gives them an out for min spec bumps. But even if we treat Windows 11 as not being bound by the free updates aspect of Windows 10, which may be fair, the entire history of Windows has been one with an upgrade path. It would be blindsiding in many ways for that to not be there at all.

The OS being upgradable on appropriate hardware is part of the expected functionality of the product. It would be missing a feature if it shipped without it.

Windows has been around for decades and only once did they offer a free upgrade and that was a limited time only. I also never once paid $50 for an upgrade of windows.

Also how do you know when a next gen system is coming out unless its announced ?

I am sure you can sell your pc and reduce the cost of buying a new pc ?


Your arguments sound odd. If MS wants to charge for it then they will charge for it. I hope they do charge for it and set the requirements high for the software so we get a clean break from people using it on very old systems. If you don't want to pay for what ms offers continue using the free updates MS is providing on windows 10 and have provided for 6 years now .

 

[Malo]

@eastmen are you against free upgrades or against upgrade paths in general. As in I can't upgrade my windows 10 to 11 and must start from scratch?

I think there's some confusion here.

 

[eastmen]

@eastmen are you against free upgrades or against upgrade paths in general. As in I can't upgrade my windows 10 to 11 and must start from scratch?

I think there's some confusion here.

I firmly am against the free upgrade path and this is why.

People will expect any device that runs windows 10 to receive the update. I know and have supported people running machines built for xp who are now running windows 10 on them

Windows 10 requirements are a 1ghz single core cpu with ape , nx and sse2 support. IT requires 1GB(32bit)/2GB (x64) and a dx9 graphics card.

I think we are well past the time frame for these machines to work as remember these are pretty much the requirements for windows 8 which is pretty much windows 7 requirements.

So really at the end of the day you can run windows 10 on a p4 , p-m , atom , athlon 64 and so on. its about time that this legacy hardware stays gone imo. Its puling so much down. Let it stay with windows 10 that is supported by ms until what 2025. Some of these machines will be 20 years old. The p4 with sse 2 was released in 2000 so heck some machines will be 21 years old when this gets released.


I also think it would be best if they require a complete system reinstall from windows 10. But I know that wont happen and there would be some type of upgrade path for users. We will see what happens in 3 days.

 

[Malo]

I firmly am against the free upgrade path and this is why.

I am all for a price for the upgrade and an increase in minimum specification.

For the cost of the upgrade I am fine with a reasonable price, if they remove the advertising tracking and ad space they've placed within windows. I do agree with you that this will also help prevent really old systems from being upgraded.

If they raise the minimum specification and are able to remove a lot of legacy compatibility from the code which results in a cleaner, more efficient OS then that's great.

 

[eastmen]

I am all for a price for the upgrade and an increase in minimum specification.

For the cost of the upgrade I am fine with a reasonable price, if they remove the advertising tracking and ad space they've placed within windows. I do agree with you that this will also help prevent really old systems from being upgraded.

If they raise the minimum specification and are able to remove a lot of legacy compatibility from the code which results in a cleaner, more efficient OS then that's great.

One thing to remember is that upgrades carry forward a lot of bad stuff. You were able to upgrade windows 7 and 8 to windows 10. So there are people who still have that windows 7 install that was upgrade to 10 that will want to upgrade to 11. Its why I think a clean install option would be best. I wonder what MS will do to by pass this cluster of a support issue that will happen.

I remember windows 10 will flag certain programs and wont allow you to upgrade until they are removed. Some were viruses or other programs that wouldn't let you uninstall without a really good anti virus program and lots of people would be forced to do a clean install over the old os and have a windows.old file created with their old data.

 

[PSman1700]

Is it confirmed W10 users wont be able to upgrade to W11 for 'free'?

 

[Eolirin]

Windows has been around for decades and only once did they offer a free upgrade and that was a limited time only. I also never once paid $50 for an upgrade of windows.

Also how do you know when a next gen system is coming out unless its announced ?

I am sure you can sell your pc and reduce the cost of buying a new pc ?


Your arguments sound odd. If MS wants to charge for it then they will charge for it. I hope they do charge for it and set the requirements high for the software so we get a clean break from people using it on very old systems. If you don't want to pay for what ms offers continue using the free updates MS is providing on windows 10 and have provided for 6 years now .

My recollection is that the cost for an upgrade license, rather than a full license, for windows 7, was $50, and that the Vista upgrade license was similar. It's been ages, so I may be off on that, and that may have been edu pricing. But Windows has always provided an upgrade path for devices that supported the new minimum specs of the OS, even when those specs were significantly increased, ala Vista. Also, you obviously can't continue to rely on those Windows 10 updates, because it will go out of service, which means you will stop getting security updates. Windows 10 end of support date seems set to either 2024 or 2025, I forget which. If I buy a high end system now, the expectation, given the way things have been, is that that hardware will still be viable in 3-4 years and shouldn't need to be replaced. Being able to move that system to Windows 11 is necessary to keep it up to date with security patches. But note I never said it needed to be free. Not once. I don't really care that much as long as it's reasonably priced. Not having a free upgrade isn't the same as not providing an upgrade path, and I think those are getting conflated. Forcing everyone to do fresh installs of the OS to upgrade is nuts. Windows has been set up to handle migration of data and settings for forever now.

That being said, I will point out that one of the consequences of it not being free is that the security environment is made significantly worse as people fail to upgrade machines that are not near end of life. The other issue that used to exist around feature support fracturing the market for app dev is much less of an issue now because of the work they've been doing on decoupling APIs and frameworks from the OS. But the security issues are still a huge problem, and a large part of the motivation behind Windows as a Service in the first place. Windows 7 going end of life was not nearly as bad as XP thanks to the work put in to make the move to 10 easier, and even then it was far from ideal. So there's a really good reason to keep it free, but I don't have a huge stake in it either way. MS'll do what makes sense to them on that front.

But as to next gen systems launches, the telegraphing is extremely obvious, the release dates are always end of year, generations tend to have similarly long life spans, they start making announcements telegraphing where things are going well ahead of the actual announcement, etc. Cars are like clockwork, new models every year at around the same time, as are most other forms of consumer electronics. If it's June, you don't buy a new Surface device until after October, because that's when they'll announce new stuff. And so on. OSes have expectations of upgrade paths for devices that can still support them because OSes are usually shorter lived than the hardware running them. Again these do not need to be free. But they do need to exist. No one sells their perfectly functional desktop gaming rig that can play everything at high frame rates just because they want a new OS version, and no one should have to.

 

[Eolirin]

Is it confirmed W10 users wont be able to upgrade to W11 for 'free'?

No, we know nothing either way.

 

[eastmen]

My recollection is that the cost for an upgrade license, rather than a full license, for windows 7, was $50, and that the Vista upgrade license was similar. It's been ages, so I may be off on that, and that may have been edu pricing. But Windows has always provided an upgrade path for devices that supported the new minimum specs of the OS, even when those specs were significantly increased, ala Vista. Also, you obviously can't continue to rely on those Windows 10 updates, because it will go out of service, which means you will stop getting security updates. Windows 10 end of support date seems set to either 2024 or 2025, I forget which. If I buy a high end system now, the expectation, given the way things have been, is that that hardware will still be viable in 3-4 years and shouldn't need to be replaced. Being able to move that system to Windows 11 is necessary to keep it up to date with security patches. But note I never said it needed to be free. Not once. I don't really care that much as long as it's reasonably priced. Not having a free upgrade isn't the same as not providing an upgrade path, and I think those are getting conflated. Forcing everyone to do fresh installs of the OS to upgrade is nuts. Windows has been set up to handle migration of data and settings for forever now.

That being said, I will point out that one of the consequences of it not being free is that the security environment is made significantly worse as people fail to upgrade machines that are not near end of life. The other issue that used to exist around feature support fracturing the market for app dev is much less of an issue now because of the work they've been doing on decoupling APIs and frameworks from the OS. But the security issues are still a huge problem, and a large part of the motivation behind Windows as a Service in the first place. Windows 7 going end of life was not nearly as bad as XP thanks to the work put in to make the move to 10 easier, and even then it was far from ideal. So there's a really good reason to keep it free, but I don't have a huge stake in it either way. MS'll do what makes sense to them on that front.

But as to next gen systems launches, the telegraphing is extremely obvious, the release dates are always end of year, generations tend to have similarly long life spans, they start making announcements telegraphing where things are going well ahead of the actual announcement, etc. Cars are like clockwork, new models every year at around the same time, as are most other forms of consumer electronics. If it's June, you don't buy a new Surface device until after October, because that's when they'll announce new stuff. And so on. OSes have expectations of upgrade paths for devices that can still support them because OSes are usually shorter lived than the hardware running them. Again these do not need to be free. But they do need to exist. No one sells their perfectly functional desktop gaming rig that can play everything at high frame rates just because they want a new OS version, and no one should have to.

1) Windows 10 is $140 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/windows-10-home/d76qx4bznwk4?activetab=pivot:overviewtab for home
$200 for Pro https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/windows-10-pro/df77x4d43rkt?activetab=pivot:overviewtab

Windows 10 released in 2015 so if purchased on launch its almost 6 years (july will be 6 years) for $140-$200 or $2 to $2.80 a month for the OS usage. If you stay on the OS until its EOL date which is in 2025 that is 10 years or $1.18 a month / $1.67 cents.

The price is extremely low and again you bought windows 10 not 11. IF you want windows 11 just buy it

2) What is end of life for you in terms of machines ? Like I said you can run windows 10 on machines made in 2000 which is 21 years ago. In 4 years the machines would be 25 years old but they still run windows 10. So when do they go end of life ? 2025 ?

If you want to get into windows as a service when do you pay for it ? Will you be happy if you get windows 11 but your paying $5 a month for it ? Surface products come out when they are ready. There are random gaps between them

Surface pro was Feb 2013
Pro 2 Oct 2013
Pro 3 June 2014
Pro 4 Oct 2015
Pro (5) June 2017
Pro 6 Oct 2018
Pro 7 Oct 2019

For a consumer there hasn't been a new update but in early Jan 2021 we got the pro 7 + for businesses.

At some point the bandaid gets pulled off and a person who bought windows 10 has windows 10. What they sold you didn't change

 

[DmitryKo]

They need to up the requirements for the hardware. Windows 10 will run on 20 year old machines. I hope they don't do upgrades and you actually have to go out and purchase it

Companies release new products all the time without update paths. When you purchase anything you should purchase for what it is not what you hope it will be in the future.
Its an OS you either stay with windows 10 or purchase windows 11.

You are mixing up three independent concepts:

• hardware requirements
• software upgrade path
• upgrade pricing

1) Minimum system requirements for Windows 10 aren't very demanding - basically any x64-capable processor for 32-bit x86 editions (due to a requirement for NX bit), and a recent CPU stepping with a few additional instructions for 64-bit x64 editions.

I would fully expect that Microsoft will ditch the 32-bit edition and only offer a 64-bit x64 edition of Windows 11, and raise the minimum requirements to a supported CPU above and at least 4 Gbytes of RAM.

But honestly any desktop CPU before Sandy Bridge (LGA1155) from 2011 or Bulldozer (AM3+) from 2013 would have a hard time just running Windows Defender antivirus, Windows Search indexer, and a few Edge or Chrome tabs.

Therefore recommended setup could include an AVX-capable processor, 8 Gbytes of RAM, Direct3D12 video card and WDDM 3.0 drivers, and 64-bit UEFI motherboard with a bootable NVMe SSD.


Note that 64-bit x64 editions still support running 32-bit x86 applications and services through WOW64 layer (and 64-bit ARM64 edition supports 32-bit x86 and 64-bit x64 executables with a hybrid software emulator).


2) In-place upgrade is possible from Windows 7 or 8.x to Windows 10 when on the same 'platform' - i.e. from 32- bit x86 to 32-bit x86, or from 64-bit x64 to 64-bit x64 editions - but not from a 32-bit to a 64-bit edition or vice versa (this requires a clean install, though there are 3rd-party utilities that claim to support cross-platform upgrades).

I'd expect Windows 11 to retain in-place upgrade path from Windows 10; not sure about 7 or 8.x.

OS setup procedure can typically upgrade / remove old incompatible applications and drivers and migrate documents and system settings, but the PC still has to meet the minimum system requirements - this is always checked at the setup preparation stage.

3) New OS versions typically include upgrade pricing, i.e. discounts for existing owners of a qualified OS version - in Mictosoft Store these include Microsoft Windows 10 (only for edition upgrades, i.e. from Home to Pro and Pro for Workstations) and Apple OS X / macOS (for Boot Camp installations on Intel Macs).

Although the Windows 10 'free upgrade' offer officially ended in 2016, unoficially existing Windows 7 and 8.x installations are still eligible for a free in-place upgrade to Windows 10.

I'd expect that upgrade from Windows 10 to 11 will remain free of charge for end-users, i both OEM and retail channels.

 

[DmitryKo]

I firmly am against the free upgrade path and this is why.
at the end of the day you can run windows 10 on a p4 , p-m , atom , athlon 64 and so on. its about time that this legacy hardware stays gone imo. Its puling so much down. Let it stay with windows 10 that is supported by ms until what 2025. Some of these machines will be 20 years old. The p4 with sse 2 was released in 2000 so heck some machines will be 21 years old when this gets released.

I'd agree with that, but the older systems could be cut off by simply raising the minimum system requirements, so they would become ineligible for install and unable to run the new OS version.

I fail to see how disabling the inplace OS upgrade path, or charging end users with $100 for a new Windows version, would achieve the same goal. Suppose I paid for the full retail version of Windows 11 and clean installed it on my old computer - would this really make me upgrade my old hardware?

I also think it would be best if they require a complete system reinstall from windows 10

here are people who still have that windows 7 install that was upgrade to 10 that will want to upgrade to 11. Its why I think a clean install option would be best.

Each major version update is already a complete in-place reinstall of the OS.

Also Windows setup is scripted to replace/remove outdated software and device drivers, so clean install would serve no useful purpose - if you really need to outright remove all apps and documents, there is an option to reset the OS.

lots of people would be forced to do a clean install over the old os and have a windows.old file created with their old data.

Windows.old is created duing in-place upgrade, not by clean install.

If they raise the minimum specification and are able to remove a lot of legacy compatibility from the code which results in a cleaner, more efficient OS then that's great.

Windows gives you choice - either run really fast on a newer UEFI motherboard which supports bootable NVMe disks, or run really slow on an old crippled hard disk based system from 2005.

If Microsoft wants all their users to run most recent serviceable version of Windows, they will not disable these legacy systems any time soon.

 

[orangpelupa]

in-place reinstall sometimes failed to fix issues, or it brings old issues to new windows. on the other hand, sometimes it does fix issues

 

[eastmen]

You are mixing up three independent concepts:

• hardware requirements
• software upgrade path
• upgrade pricing

1) Minimum system requirements for Windows 10 aren't very demanding - basically any x64-capable processor for 32-bit x86 editions (due to a requirement for NX bit), and a recent CPU stepping with a few additional instructions for 64-bit x64 editions.


But honestly any desktop CPU before Sandy Bridge (LGA1155) from 2011 or Bulldozer (AM3+) from 2013 would have a hard time just running Windows Defender antivirus, Windows Search indexer, and a few Edge or Chrome tabs.

Therefore I would fully expect that Microsoft will ditch the 32-bit edition and only offer a 64-bit x64 edition of Windows 11, and the minimum requirements should be raised to at least 4 Gbytes of RAM.

Recommended setup could include an AVX-capable processor, 8 Gbytes of RAM, Direct3D12 video card and WDDM 3.0 drivers, and 64-bit UEFI motherboard with a bootable NVMe SSD.


Note that 64-bit x64 editions still support running 32-bit x86 applications and services through WOW64 layer (and 64-bit ARM64 edition supports 32-bit x86 and 64-bit x64 executables with a hybrid software emulator).


2) In-place upgrade should be possible from Windows 7 or 8.x to Windows 10 when on the same 'platform' - i.e. from x86 to x86, or from x64 to x64 - but not from 32-bit to 64-bit edition or vice versa (theis requires a clean install, though there are 3rd-party utilities that claim to support cross-platform upgrades).

While OS setup procedure can upgrade / remove old incompatible applications and drivers, the system would have to meet the new minimum system requirements - this has always been checked at the setup preparation stage.


3) New OS version typically includes upgrade pricing, i.e. discounts for owners of qualified OS versions - currently these include Microsoft Windows 10 (only for edition upgrades, i.e. from Home to Pro and Pro for Workstations) and Apple OS X (for Boot Camp installations) in Windows Store.

Although the 'free upgrade' offer for Windows 10 officially ended in 2016, unoficially Windows 7 and 8.x are still eligible for a free upgrade to Windows 10.

1) Pentium 4 641 seems to run it fine. Its a cedar mill core which would be a 2006 chip

2) We don't want in place upgrades because as I said you can be carrying forth issues from 2 to 3 generations of windows upgrades. Windows 7 to 8 to 10 to 11. It can cause a ton of issues. Its why if I was microsoft I would want to ditch upgrades completely and require fresh installs. And yes I have fixed computers that were originally windows 7 that were then running windows 10 and those people have already asked me to put windows 11 on it when they come out but they want ot keep all their old stuff including programs. You can see where the issue is. It should be possible but it will be a service nightmare

3) Sometimes but not always is there an upgrade price. As for the free upgrade that was discontinued but can still be forced through since Microsoft didn't go about locking it in a smart way. That doesn't mean that going forward windows 11 will be free. In fact I think your going to be paying monthly for it as part of a subscription or your going to be required to pay for it out right.

 

[eastmen]

I'd agree with that, but the older systems could be cut off by simply raising the minimum system requirements, so they would become ineligible for install and unable to run the new OS version.

How would you lock it ? People can just spoof the hardware information if need be or install it on another machine and stick the drive inside the older machine to get it to run.

I fail to see how disabling the inplace OS upgrade path, or charging end users with $100 for a new Windows version, would achieve the same goal. Suppose I paid for the full retail version of Windows 11 and clean installed it on my old computer - would this really make me upgrade my old hardware?

Well
1) There are a lot of people who will upgrade cause its the new OS . There are plenty of people who upgrade IOS or Andriod just because its new. There are also lots who do so with windows. This thread has a person who wants a version they didn't buy just because its new and feel they deserve it. So people like that exist.

2)The price point to entry would have some sit there and say. Hmm I have this 15 or 10 or even 5 year old machine and I have to pay $140 to upgrade it but there are all these great new featuers in these new machines and they are I dunno $800 bucks. Do I put the $140-$200 for an OS upgrade into this old device or do I take that money towards a new device.

3) There are plenty of enthusiasts who would do just that. A fresh install of windows. I know I have been doing that since windows 3.1 each time a new windows comes out. In place upgrades bring a lot of baggage even things you might not realize are on there that anti virus programs miss. Registry errors , software you might have installed years ago that is just sitting there and so on and so forth. I also upgrade my computer at least once a year. If it required a complete reinstall and a purchase people will just wait and get it with a new machine.

Each major version update is already a complete in-place reinstall of the OS.

Also Windows setup is scripted to replace/remove outdated software and device drivers, so clean install would serve no useful purpose - if you really need to outright remove all apps and documents, there is an option to reset the OS.

As a person who did pc help desk for a bit during the windows 10 years Ican tell you that the reinstall of the OS gives the option of keeping all your old files and programs. So if you have something malicious it will stay there

I had a client who insisted that an issue was hardware and not software , had me clone his drive and give him a replacement device and wouldn't you know it ... the same issues happened but when I wiped the drive and had him reinstall his programs one by one ... the problem never came back ! Must have been a hardware issue ! BTW the original device also worked fine with a fresh install

Windows gives you choice - either run really fast on a newer UEFI motherboard which supports bootable NVMe disks, or run really slow on an old crippled hard disk based system from 2005.

If Microsoft wants all their users to run most recent serviceable version of Windows, they will not disable these legacy systems any time soon.

And maybe in the future MS will require more cutting edge systems and you to buy the new OS or stay with windows 10. Imagine that

in-place reinstall sometimes failed to fix issues, or it brings old issues to new windows. on the other hand, sometimes it does fix issues

Its a crap shoot but I can tell you that taking a windows 7 machine , upgrading to windows 8 then to 8.1 then to 10 and all the updates in that and then to windows 11 and all the while the machine is used daily to vist porn sites or torrets or what have you is a recipe for a huge service nightmare for MS . They already went through it with windows 10.

I don't know what their plans are. I just would hope they would make windows 11 a clean break from what came before and require a new purchase and fresh install of the OS. It would be whats best for the platform as a whole along with very high system requirements

 

[Silent_Buddha]

How would you lock it ? People can just spoof the hardware information if need be or install it on another machine and stick the drive inside the older machine to get it to run.

And that doesn't change regardless of whether you pay for a new version, pay for an upgrade version, or if you get a free new version or free upgrade version.

Even before the "free" Windows upgrade period for Win7/8 people were buying Windows to install on really really ancient hardware that was barely able to run Windows. Literally nothing changed.

I know because I used to do support for Windows 95/98/98SE/ME/Win2k/WinXP. The transition from Win10 to Win11 is likely to not even be remotely as difficult as the transition to WinXP where the upgrade had to deal with a change to the entire underlying OS (consumer Windows moving to the NT kernel).

Regards,
SB

 

[eastmen]

And that doesn't change regardless of whether you pay for a new version, pay for an upgrade version, or if you get a free new version or free upgrade version.

Even before the "free" Windows upgrade period for Win7/8 people were buying Windows to install on really really ancient hardware that was barely able to run Windows. Literally nothing changed.

I know because I used to do support for Windows 95/98/98SE/ME/Win2k/WinXP. The transition from Win10 to Win11 is likely to not even be remotely as difficult as the transition to WinXP where the upgrade had to deal with a change to the entire underlying OS (consumer Windows moving to the NT kernel).

Regards,
SB

Except you now have the barrier to entry set to a price point. And again the transition wont just be windows 10 to 11. There will be people with machines originally running windows 7 that have been through the full upgrade path .

 

[Eolirin]

This thread has a person who wants a version they didn't buy just because its new and feel they deserve it. So people like that exist.

For the millionth time this is not my position. I have no problem with the upgrade having a cost. Please actually read what I'm writing.