Microsoft Confirms Windows 10 New Monthly Charge
And now the other shoe drops. This was not a hard thing to imagine. They got 100 for an OS they had to support for 7-10 years, that's 10.00 year. They woke up to the fact they needed a steady revenue stream and a company with 10,000 computers will be paying them 70,000 a month. Thats a lot more than they were making selling software. Note the "there will never be another Windows version" caveat. So, go get W10 before they impose a fee, or switch to another OS. I would be all the consumers in the world could go Linux and it would mean nothing to them. They are after business only here. Maybe, if they are smart they might make the home version free, or offer it through a business that subscribes as a perk. That may backfire if a Linux version that is easy to run and can run MS software is released and business tells MS to bite me and bail out on them altogether. There's an opportunity for some smart coders to exploit: Make an easy to install and use Linux that can handle MS software and sell it, or undercut MS monthly rate.
Its also the next step toward government and large corporate sponsors stealthily taking computing power back from the people and making the poeple dependent on a controllable resource, the internet. The cloud is a scam with a pleasant attractive moniker. It promises safety and easy use, and instead steals personal information, invades privacy, and assists the federal police in manipulation of the people.