http://www.infoworld.com/article/2834414/microsoft-windows/what-you-will-love-and-hate-about-windows-10.html

My feeling is that Windows 10 (which does not make me happy as a name) will likely be a make it or break it moment for Windows. Mac OSX and Linux are taking Windows to task big time but people are mostly playing a waiting game to see what Microsoft will do with their upcoming release. They are giving them a chance to course correct now that Ballmer is out on his ear. Can Microsoft turn things around with someone new at the helm? Or will they continue to steer into the iceberg?

Windows 10 appears to be well situated to have a good recovery trajectory for Microsoft. But we will just have to wait and see. If they botch this like they did with Windows 8, they are going to lose market share very quickly. I think that they have to make this work.

@Dashrender said:

@Bill-Kindle said:

@JaredBusch said:

This is a huge benefit. Also a good portal into lifetime subscriptions.. We'll see how it plays out once people start graduating.

I still have my community college email, and I just used it for this offer and it worked. I've attended off and on since 2006 though.

Does it give a personal O365 account, or a business style one ? I'm guessing the business style, with an email address of the school?

As far as I can tell, it appears to be business style. There's a Sharepoint page too.

@Joyfano said:

@nadnerB said:

Looks like a mix of Windows 7, 8 and Linux.

I hope they rename it in Australia to Windows Mongrel.

Hmm why Mongrel Sir?

Mongrel
A mongrel or mutt is a dog that is not the result of breeding and belongs to no breed. Wikipedia

Well, windows can be a bit of a dog. Windows 9 is from such a mixed background, it going to have an identity crisis. It seems to be random parts of other OS's slapped together. However, in saying that, no one will really know until the official announcement event comes around when there will be better information.

It may lose mongrel status but Microsoft have to be 100% sure of their direction AND stick to it

@scottalanmiller said:

@JaredBusch said:

@scottalanmiller I don't use Imaging.
I guess I should break down the costs of buying the box without windows and using VL instead. probably a decently close comparison.

VL is upgrade only. It can't be used on a machine without OEM. You buy one VL license to get imaging rights so you don't need to track OEMs. Buying more VLs is for upgrades.

Exactly - Imaging rights is about the only nice/gime that MS has done with their licensing.

You buy ONE VL upgrade and you can apply imaging rights to all computers in your company with that exact same version. I.E. If you OEM licenses are all Windows 7, and you buy the VL upgrade for one of them, you can use the Windows 7 VL media to image every one of them.

There's no point in buying VL for the rest of the computers unless you plan to upgrade them to the next OS. (yeah I know this is the long winded way to say what Scott just said)

@scottalanmiller said:

Makes sense. They've been heading in this direction for a while.

You see this alluded to in a lot of PowerShell literature too.

So Ballmer is now getting an effective payoff for having been so crappy for so long by Nadella simply not being Ballmer and the stock inflating based on Ballmer leaving. That hardly seems like a good compensation scheme.

@Bill-Kindle said:

By harder I hope they mean that it will be harder to boot camp these tests.

The description makes it sound that way, at least.

@Carnival-Boy said:

But it's totally unmanageable for anything other than tiny environments. To the degree that I would say the low cost version is no longer available.

Yeah, If only that were true, that's it no longer available. The powers that be know they exist because they see it in the store 'Office Home Business Edition'

The concept to watch out for is "investing in technical debt".

Great link, thanks for providing it here.

@MattKing said:

@ajstringham I'll see myself out.

😛

@Dashrender that doesn't do much. People work their local daylight regardless of the time. There is no good answer. The new world is simply one where sleep must be enforced.

@Carnival-Boy said:

@scottalanmiller said:

No, I know of no product that has a restriction like that. No software, hardware, real estate, etc. It's a common belief that all kinds of things require one to be a business but the reality is is that such restrictions have no reason to exist and so don't. Some product somewhere is like that, but I can't think of any.

I've had problems the other way round, where I've tried to buy a consumer product with a business credit card and it's been declined because the credit card is registered to a business address.

1TB of data for $30, add e-mail and a bunch of other stuff for an extra $20. Is there anything else in the market that offers anything similar?

Yes. Often consumers get special pricing not available to a business. But any person can simply declare themselves a business if they want.

@JaredBusch said:

Maybe someday I will have to bend on that stance if something happens to my current client base but I have that luxury right now to be picky about the clients I keep. I'll give any client a chance, but historically that has only led to the hassle of collection attempts.

You can say that again! If they don't consider IT important, they definitely won't feel it's needed to pay for it either, instead they'll just steal your time like Scott mentions in another thread.

As for being a client or not... I was talking/arguing with a co-worker, not the people in charge. But that being said.. the people in charge definitely are frustrated that they have to do upgrades, why doesn't it just work like it did when I bought it? etc.

@alexntg said:

Mmm, steak fries! Feel free to sync those over to my house.

How many files are being synced?

She has 3k or so files. no where close to the 20k limit. Another user does have more than 20k. I taught him how to create zip archives.

@scottalanmiller said:

@Joyfano said:

@scottalanmiller said:

@technobabble said:

yeah, he told me that the had people writing drivers and such. I was only half listening to his ramblings waiting to get paid for the parts I was going to throw away!

Drivers you can get, it's patches and fixes that you cannot.

Hahahah We are still using Windows XP, Virtual Mode..

Do you have any plans to migrate off of it.

Yes.. its still connected with my problem last time ( RSA token not working in some windows 7)