Where is Windows heading?

An interesting comment from Microsoft at the end of an Australian Parliamentary enquiry into software/hardware pricing:

Microsoft: If our prices were unfair, people wouldn’t buy them

The last cab off the rank was Microsoft, fronted by Australian managing director Pip Marlow.

Marlow acknowledged that the company had not polled Australian customers about the fairness of its local pricing, but went on to argue that different markets require different prices and the sales figures speak for themselves:

We don’t set a global price for our products. We don’t believe that every market is the same. Emerging markets where the cost of living and the availability of technology is different has to be priced differently. At the end of the day, if we make a price too high in a particular market, customers will look elsewhere.​

The Committee then confronted Marlow with a pricing sample of 47 Microsoft products, of which nearly 66 per cent are more expensive in Australia than the US.

Again, Marlow cited Microsoft’s sales success in the country, claiming “if they don’t like it, they vote with their wallets”. Under repeated questioning, Marlow all but dismissed the main thrust of the inquiry, claiming: “You’re looking for one simple silver bullet. There isn’t one.”

The Committee then rattled off some Microsoft price comparisons between US and Australia. When lumped together, the evidence is pretty sobering:

Windows 7 Professional (US: $326, AU: $469)
Office 2010 (US: $356, AU: $499)
Word 2010 (US: $142, AU: $189)
Visio Pro (US: $570, AU: $900)
Visual Studio 2012 with MSDN membership (US: $12,000, AU: $21,000)​

As the questions drew to a close, Marlow claimed that the company would “consider” using different pricing strategies as the company moves deeper into the cloud.

IT Pricing Inquiry: A Recap Of Excuses | Lifehacker Australia

How much deeper into the cloud does Microsoft intend to go?

 

[chrisa]

MS is hoping to get everything up there - including the os itself.

There will be cost and privacy issues for the punters.

Microsoft patent covers streaming OS plans | Geek Pick | Geek.com

The fast machine booting through streaming storage patent details how a virtual hard disk (VHD) image could be pushed to a user’s desktop, laptop, phone, or tablet (or just about any other device… perhaps a future Xbox?) and cached in memory

First, the article is like 2 years old. Second, everybody is playing the patent games and patenting anything they can dream up to hopefully c-block someone later. It doesn't necessarily mean they're going to go the full monty.

That said, its an operating system.. not private documents. There are privacy issues involved with hosting documents(which is allready widely done). The only real issue in hosting an operating system is the speed of download and the security in making sure the image doesn't get hacked and modified.The operating system you download would be the same on every system, with your configuration files(probably also hosted), determining the look and feel.

Also, like with cloud storage, this is a way of monetizing the operating system. As in, they will rent you access on a month to month basis(just like Office 365). It does have its advantages, but I for one would stick to local storage.

 

[Ray8]

Microsoft must be heading towards the Takeaway Model; akin to those people who never cook and the only device they have is a microwave, as all they ever eat is takeaway.

 

[chrisa]

Microsoft must be heading towards the Takeaway Model; akin to those people who never cook and the only device they have is a microwave, as all they ever eat is takeaway.

What a downloadable OS would be ideal for is building tablets without hard drives. A Hard Drive is one of the biggest physical pieces of any mobile device, getting rid of one would save on a lot of physical space and lower component cost by quite a bit. You'd simply download the OS and apps straight into some type of ram disk and run them from there. If you stripped the whole front side of Windows and stuck with just RT and the core libraries(.NET, DirectX, etc) needed to be driven at runtime along with keeping only the drivers and file system specific to the tablet you're using.. you could probably get an extremely small footprint. Any documents, apps, and configuration files would be saved to SkyDrive of course. You could probably run a tablet off a total of like 4-8 gigs of ram easy.

I could see it for some type of Ultra-Mini Mobile Device. Regular Tablets or PC's.. no. You would need a lot more bandwidth before you could even dream of having someone download a full-blown PC OS, and even then.. you need local storage.. you're not going to host entire applications from the web and download them every time you go to run for obvious bandwidth cap reasons.

 

[jimbo45]

Microsoft must be heading towards the Takeaway Model; akin to those people who never cook and the only device they have is a microwave, as all they ever eat is takeaway.

What a downloadable OS would be ideal for is building tablets without hard drives. A Hard Drive is one of the biggest physical pieces of any mobile device, getting rid of one would save on a lot of physical space. You'd simply download the OS and apps straight into some type of ram disk and run them from there. If you stripped the whole front side of Windows and stuck with just RT and the core libraries(.NET, DirectX, etc) needed to be driven at runtime along with keeping only the drivers and file system specific to the tablet you're using.. you could probably get an extremely small footprint. Any documents, apps, and configuration files would be saved to SkyDrive of course.

I could see it for some type of Ultra-Mini Mobile Device. Regular Tablets or PC's.. no. You would need a lot more bandwidth before you could even dream of having someone download a full-blown PC OS, and even then.. you need local storage.. you're not going to host entire applications from the web and download them every time you go to run for obvious bandwidth cap reasons.

Hi there
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with an OS you can install using an Internet connection -- I've done this a few times with some Linux distros where the install method gives you a "Network install" option. If the Internet connection is fine this can in some ways be better since the on line driver hardware base could theoretically be much larger than having the whole kybosh on a physical device. The OS can be maintained so installers are always installing the latest copy.

The danger as always with this is that it's simple at some point for the OS provider to start charging - and if this is the only method of installing the OS then you've had it -- this has now become a "Legalized version of Ransomware".

Fortunately this won't happen to Linux -- open source anyway -- but with Ms. -- Look at Office 365 -- so you have been warned.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Ray8]

Microsoft must be heading towards the Takeaway Model; akin to those people who never cook and the only device they have is a microwave, as all they ever eat is takeaway.

What a downloadable OS would be ideal for is building tablets without hard drives. A Hard Drive is one of the biggest physical pieces of any mobile device, getting rid of one would save on a lot of physical space and lower component cost by quite a bit. You'd simply download the OS and apps straight into some type of ram disk and run them from there. If you stripped the whole front side of Windows and stuck with just RT and the core libraries(.NET, DirectX, etc) needed to be driven at runtime along with keeping only the drivers and file system specific to the tablet you're using.. you could probably get an extremely small footprint. Any documents, apps, and configuration files would be saved to SkyDrive of course. You could probably run a tablet off a total of like 4-8 gigs of ram easy.

I could see it for some type of Ultra-Mini Mobile Device. Regular Tablets or PC's.. no. You would need a lot more bandwidth before you could even dream of having someone download a full-blown PC OS, and even then.. you need local storage.. you're not going to host entire applications from the web and download them every time you go to run for obvious bandwidth cap reasons.

I don't think that really holds true, we already have memory that's physically so small that it is in no way the limiting factor in any device. How else can you get mobile phones that are more powerful and have greater memory capacity than PCs of only a generation ago?

No, hosting the software remotely is nothing more than a way to lock you in inexorably, such that you won't want to change for fear of losing everything. Microsoft seem to be wanting to put you on a heart/lung/dialysis machine that they solely control and one which you can't remove.

 

[chrisa]

Microsoft must be heading towards the Takeaway Model; akin to those people who never cook and the only device they have is a microwave, as all they ever eat is takeaway.

What a downloadable OS would be ideal for is building tablets without hard drives. A Hard Drive is one of the biggest physical pieces of any mobile device, getting rid of one would save on a lot of physical space. You'd simply download the OS and apps straight into some type of ram disk and run them from there. If you stripped the whole front side of Windows and stuck with just RT and the core libraries(.NET, DirectX, etc) needed to be driven at runtime along with keeping only the drivers and file system specific to the tablet you're using.. you could probably get an extremely small footprint. Any documents, apps, and configuration files would be saved to SkyDrive of course.

I could see it for some type of Ultra-Mini Mobile Device. Regular Tablets or PC's.. no. You would need a lot more bandwidth before you could even dream of having someone download a full-blown PC OS, and even then.. you need local storage.. you're not going to host entire applications from the web and download them every time you go to run for obvious bandwidth cap reasons.

Hi there
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with an OS you can install using an Internet connection -- I've done this a few times with some Linux distros where the install method gives you a "Network install" option. If the Internet connection is fine this can in some ways be better since the on line driver hardware base could theoretically be much larger than having the whole kybosh on a physical device. The OS can be maintained so installers are always installing the latest copy.

The danger as always with this is that it's simple at some point for the OS provider to start charging - and if this is the only method of installing the OS then you've had it -- this has now become a "Legalized version of Ransomware".

Fortunately this won't happen to Linux -- open source anyway -- but with Ms. -- Look at Office 365 -- so you have been warned.

Cheers
jimbo

Unless of course they simply give you the hardware for free and charge you say $20/month, payable by phone cards if you want. Cancel anytime. Feel free to access your SkyDrive via normal means by PC or laptop. Every year they simply send you the new model :>. They get $240 bucks in a year, and the hardware without a hard drive would probably be sub-$100 easy. Due to the nature of the beast, if stolen.. it can't be hacked.. and if it were stolen, they could simply send you another while deactivating the old and preventing it from being used again. As such, there isn't any value in stealing them.

For people who can't necessarily buy devices upfront, it would be ideal. And if it came with some type of digital wallet, someone could use phone cards to load money and simply use that as a method of payment.

 

[Ray8]

But all that relies on a permanent internet connection which is nigh on impossible, especially for travellers. It would kill any computer capability if there was an internet or server failure. An absolute disaster for corporations. If they plan to do that, Microsoft is going to be in for a very hard time.

 

[jimbo45]

What a downloadable OS would be ideal for is building tablets without hard drives. A Hard Drive is one of the biggest physical pieces of any mobile device, getting rid of one would save on a lot of physical space. You'd simply download the OS and apps straight into some type of ram disk and run them from there. If you stripped the whole front side of Windows and stuck with just RT and the core libraries(.NET, DirectX, etc) needed to be driven at runtime along with keeping only the drivers and file system specific to the tablet you're using.. you could probably get an extremely small footprint. Any documents, apps, and configuration files would be saved to SkyDrive of course.

I could see it for some type of Ultra-Mini Mobile Device. Regular Tablets or PC's.. no. You would need a lot more bandwidth before you could even dream of having someone download a full-blown PC OS, and even then.. you need local storage.. you're not going to host entire applications from the web and download them every time you go to run for obvious bandwidth cap reasons.

Hi there
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with an OS you can install using an Internet connection -- I've done this a few times with some Linux distros where the install method gives you a "Network install" option. If the Internet connection is fine this can in some ways be better since the on line driver hardware base could theoretically be much larger than having the whole kybosh on a physical device. The OS can be maintained so installers are always installing the latest copy.

The danger as always with this is that it's simple at some point for the OS provider to start charging - and if this is the only method of installing the OS then you've had it -- this has now become a "Legalized version of Ransomware".

Fortunately this won't happen to Linux -- open source anyway -- but with Ms. -- Look at Office 365 -- so you have been warned.

Cheers
jimbo

Unless of course they simply give you the hardware for free and charge you say $20/month, payable by phone cards if you want. Cancel anytime. Feel free to access your SkyDrive via normal means by PC or laptop. Every year they simply send you the new model :>. They get $240 bucks in a year, and the hardware without a hard drive would probably be sub-$100 easy. Due to the nature of the beast, if stolen.. it can't be hacked.. and if it were stolen, they could simply send you another while deactivating the old and preventing it from being used again. As such, there isn't any value in stealing them.

For people who can't necessarily buy devices upfront, it would be ideal. And if it came with some type of digital wallet, someone could use phone cards to load money and simply use that as a method of payment.

Hi there
Payment by phone is already in place.
Don't forget some of these subscriptions might SOUND cheap -- but in the long term even 240 USD a year is nearly 1300 USD over 10 years.

I probably keep a laptop for around 5 years and that's for me around 440 USD per 5 years. Much cheaper.

People aren't very good with money usually -- and most subscriptions are based on the "Sucker principle" -- get them in for 20 USD a month here and 35 USD a month there.

Just sit down and add up EVERYTHING (except taxes) you are paying by month -- PHONE, UTILITIES, RENT/ MORTGAGE, INTERNET / CABLE TV/ OTHER SUBSCRIPTIONS, etc etc.

I'll bet 90% of people reading this would be amazed at the amount they are actually coughing up every month.

That's how it works "sucker them in with so called "Easy Payments".

Believe me if there's one thing I'd love to teach people it's "NO PAYMENTS ARE EVER EASY".

@Ray8 _ Permanent internet connection is not an option as you say --but there isn't anything wrong in INSTALLING the OS the first time around via the Internet. I think most people would be very unhappy if the OS couldn't run on local hardware after installation.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[chrisa]

But all that relies on a permanent internet connection which is nigh on impossible, especially for travellers. It would kill any computer capability if there was an internet or server failure. An absolute disaster for corporations. If they plan to do that, Microsoft is going to be in for a very hard time.

You wouldn't need to be connected once you downloaded the OS and your apps(unless they needed to access the internet). It would be just like a tablet now except with the OS sitting in ram along with the apps. The only thing you would worry about is running out of power. And i'm sure it would have a sleep mode which provided just enough power to keep the ram from clearing.

 

[Ray8]

You wouldn't need to be connected once you downloaded the OS and your apps(unless they needed to access the internet). It would be just like a tablet now except with the OS sitting in ram along with the apps. The only thing you would worry about is running out of power. And i'm sure it would have a sleep mode which provided just enough power to keep the ram from clearing.

Even mobile phones don't lose their OS if the battery is removed. I can resurrect my Nokia 6110 Navigator mobile phone after six months with a flat battery and everything works. Why would anyone devise a system where the moment you have a flat battery, you lose the ability to do anything after the battery was recharged (if you had no internet connection)?

 

[4wd]

Where is Windows heading?

...to the Bermuda Triangle (also called the Cloud)

 

[Hopachi]

Gonna see if I can get VMware Player running in LMDE 201303. I couldn't install it in Knoppix... this is also Debian based and i'm curious how the install goes.

VMware Player 5 works correctly in Linux Mint 14 MATE (64 bit) on my PC.

I couldn't install Workstation as the version I have (7.1.6) is too old (i.e. it doesn't have the updates for the newer kernels).
It did run correctly in Ubuntu 10.

Yes you're right! Did the test and it runs flawlessly. Thanks for confirming.
The latest version is recommended on the latest kernels, however you can try a kernel patch for 3.2 or 3.4 kernels.
I've installed Player 3.1.6 on Ubuntu 12.04, one patch worked fine.

Look for something similar to this:
vmware workstation 8.0.2 7.1.5 / player 4.0.2 3.1.5 fixes for linux 3.4 | Weltall's blog
(this is found on many sites and they also recommend to replace 7.1.5 with 7.1.6 in the script itself since the same changes apply to both versions)

It basically adds some entries to match the versions in the source of some files.
The process is automatically and should occur beffore VMware kernel modules are built at first run of the program.

If all goes well, WS7 should do it fine there.

 

[Hopachi]

Where is Windows heading?

...to the Bermuda Triangle (also called the Cloud)

HA ha what's the catch here: we get lost in the Bermuda triangle maybe, but on the other hand too much rain here... I don't like clouds.

If we'll need to pay for our updates then I will not update anymore.(that's a big point ending the sentence)

 

[Coke Robot]

apple and Adobe were also mentioned in getting flack from the Australian government due to unfair pricing, not JUST Microsoft.

 

[jimbo45]

Where is Windows heading?

...to the Bermuda Triangle (also called the Cloud)

Hi there
could also be to "The tip" although when you get used to it W8 isn't actually so bad.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Ray8]

apple and Adobe were also mentioned in getting flack from the Australian government due to unfair pricing, not JUST Microsoft.

I wasn't posting about what the companies charge (Microsoft's pricing is often no where near as bad as the others, especially Adobe), the post was about the comment made by Microsoft as to where it appears to be heading. I posted the entire statement to put things into context. You must have been channelling Bill when you read my post and then wrote your comment.

 

[whs]

I smell rats. Wherever they are heading, they want to get more money from us and a more even cash flow. And they want to make sure we are locked in with their stuff. Then they can really milk us.

As Jimbo says, it's time to get out the Linux text books. I am busy producing Linux tutorials to help make us more independent.

 

[BillWindows]

apple and Adobe were also mentioned in getting flack from the Australian government due to unfair pricing, not JUST Microsoft.

I wasn't posting about what the companies charge (Microsoft's pricing is often no where near as bad as the others, especially Adobe), the post was about the comment made by Microsoft as to where it appears to be heading. I posted the entire statement to put things into context. You must have been channelling Bill when you read my post and then wrote your comment.

I think everybody knows why you're here Ray, there's no need to explain things to us, you're on a 3 man mission.

 

[BillWindows]

I smell rats. Wherever they are heading, they want to get more money from us and a more even cash flow. And they want to make sure we are locked in with their stuff. Then they can really milk us.

As Jimbo says, it's time to get out the Linux text books. I am busy producing Linux tutorials to help make us more independent.

The Sky is Falling, the Sky is Falling.

 

[lehnerus2000]

Thanks Hopachi

...
I couldn't install Workstation as the version I have (7.1.6) is too old (i.e. it doesn't have the updates for the newer kernels).
It did run correctly in Ubuntu 10.

...
Look for something similar to this:
vmware workstation 8.0.2 7.1.5 / player 4.0.2 3.1.5 fixes for linux 3.4 | Weltall's blog
(this is found on many sites and they also recommend to replace 7.1.5 with 7.1.6 in the script itself since the same changes apply to both versions)

It basically adds some entries to match the versions in the source of some files.
The process is automatically and should occur beffore VMware kernel modules are built at first run of the program.

If all goes well, WS7 should do it fine there.

Thanks for that info Hopachi.

I suspected that there would be a workaround to fix my install issue.