Rumors surrounding Microsoft's business model for Windows 10 have been circulating since the operating system's announcement in October last year. New reports are claiming that those that own a genuine copy of Windows 8.1 will get to upgrade to Microsoft's latest work for free.
Citing sources “close to the matter”, Softpedia reports that Windows 7 users will have to pay a small fee, while those who are on an older version of Windows or have no license at all, will have to pay full price, although we don't know exactly how much ‘full price' will be.
This is all highly speculative and Microsoft won't be confirming anything until the end of April at its annual conference. However, if this is truly the company's plan, then it will encourage older system users to upgrade to a whole new Windows 10 PC, rather than just installing Windows 10 on an old machine.
We do know that a reformat will be required on systems running Windows Vista and below. Microsoft is hosting a Windows 10 event on the 22nd of January, where we will see some new features. Pricing and a final release date for the OS is expected to be announced at the annual developers conference in April.
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KitGuru Says: This may not turn out to be true as there is still plenty of time for Microsoft to make changes to its Windows 10 business plan. I think many were hoping that the OS would be free outright, much like Apple's new approach, although that seems a little unlikely. How much would you guys be willing to pay for Windows 10?
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Oh ‘Windows Vita’ truly a stunning OS. xD *You miss-spelled Vista*
I paid $40 for windows 8 on day 1, So happy to pay same again.
I hope its not subscription based.
I’d be okay paying maybe a tenner to go up from windows 7, however there’s nothing wrong with 7 to make me want to get 10. Unless 10 has some genuine performance improvements or great new features I won’t really be tempted. It does look quite nice though
that would be the dumbest idea ever, i doubt it will be or there will be major backlash.
Vista Home Pre Free
Windows 7 Ultimate Signuture edition free
Windows 8 Pro With MCE 14.99
I be happy with another free or 14.99 up to 69.99 … not nothing more and that has to to be the top tier version…
infact windows 10 should only come in one complete SKU like apple and none of this bs multi version stuff
File operations are a ton faster…visibly it looks like about an order of magnitude faster. (This is comparing a 5-year-old Toshiba high-end laptop running the 10 Tech Preview vs. my 4-year-old custom-built desktop running 7 Pro.)
What ever the price maybe, I just hope there ant any last minute changes to the operation system before releasing it to the public. Windows 8 had the Stat Menu like Windows 7 at one show running with 200MB+ memory, the next same performance no Start Menu.
I would consider purchasing it for $69.99 Home Edition, Enterprise edition $149.99 Canadian dollars
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Everyone don’t click that link. It’s just an ads…
Full price? $100 for single use version, like W7 and 8.
If it’s sub based then I will absolutely not buy, ever. I’ll switch to Linux for all of my machines. If it’s a small fee to upgrade from Seven – say £10-25 – then I’ll definitely make the move to 10. I like 10, actually. It’s not perfect, but it’s a decent OS.
Interesting, what kind of file operations?
8/8.1 have dramatic performance increases as it is dude, where’ve you been? Living under a rock? lol seriously though, data transfer speeds are a lot faster, bootup is dramatically faster, resource load is a lot less, its just a faster lighter running OS and Windows 10 AFAIK runs the same as 8/8.1 from playing with it on my test machine
If it’s better than 7, lasts for as long and never tries to charge me for anything else like 7, I’d happily chuck a hundred quid on it. Need a solid base for my system I never have to worry about again.
I was just wondering since an order of magnitude, 10x, is a fair increase. I’ve got some windows 8 and 7 machines and I definitely notice the boot difference, but can’t tell if that’s because the 8 are newer and have empty hdds. I’ve also heard about the performance improvements for gaming and such which are good.