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Comment by bell-cot | Hacker News Reader

As the article's title notes, with strings attached.

Windows 10 came out almost 10 years ago and they offered a free upgrade to Windows 11. I know people love to hate on Microsoft, but they’ve done better than most technology companies when it comes to security updates here. You’re lucky to get even half of that length of support from most Android devices for example.

If we're comparing them to other software companies, what would be their fairest comparison? Is there another company that manages the overwhelming majority of client desktops around the world?

Apple? Certainly in education and other sectors. Their support horizons are t as long.

Google with over 50% mobile os market share and they support each Android version for 3 years.

I have a perfectly good machine that cannot be upgraded to Windows 11 for some arbitrary reason. Fortunately, I no longer specifically need Windows and can move on from it. I actually quite like Windows now that WSL2 is decent, but I don't need this specific form of enshittification in my life (along with all the tracking and ads). I don't use Android for the very same reason.

That free upgrade refuses to work with my hardware. I am glad they are continuing security, but they are literally forcing me to install another OS (as I understand the security difference).

Even if I wanted to, my CPU isn't supported for (IMO) completely nonsense reasons.

Windows 10 was marketed with the promise of being the "last version of windows" by microsoft employees. Personally I think they should be held to that promise, at least in so far as supporting it as long as they still support any other version of windows.

The upgrade to windows 11 is not free in so far as it doesn't support the hardware that people have.

> Windows 10 was marketed with the promise of being the "last version of windows" by microsoft employees

It was just that - marketing! To get a load of people to migrate to it, right? "Do it guys, it's the last one you'll need to do, we promise"

Trust Microsoft? Not even once

Microsoft made the announcement through very trusted Microsoft media experts which they have since burned. I remember their emphatic assurances at the time but didn’t believe them.

They made the announcement from one guy saying it once when giving a talk on developing LiveTiles.

I previously worked at MS so asked friends about it and they agreed that there was an attempt to foster the impression of windows as a SAAS both internally and externally.

If that impression gets out and is not countered then it’s a tacit acceptance.

MS burns people all the time so we figured it would be another example of that. Just this time it’s more regular people and not just devs and partners.

Some people internally and externally legitimately believed that people would pay $100 p.a. to use windows. Had that worked they might have kept the subscription model going. Office 365 is an example of that model working.

It was also part of the billion devices push to make the case for the Microsoft App Store which we knew was in trouble, it seemed like a deliberate attempt to sacrifice long term trust for a short term gain.

> foster the impression of windows as a SAAS both internally and externally

Which is a real product they really do sell so yeah that makes sense.

That did help the make the premise more believable, the problem occurs when a low cost laptop of $500 and lasting 5 years would result in $500 for the cost of the operating system (5 * $100), instead of the OEM cost $20-60 once off. It's difficult to market segment along this axis because the way the low end of the market lowers the cost is by stretching out the upgrades. It's hard to segment on the p.a. cost basis because it causes the people paying the higher rates rightfully want to know why - and there really isn't a good answer beyond they have more money.

Allowing forever upgrades without a subscription would mean that Microsoft would basically be giving up most of the money on the low end market segment, which would have been a nice principled thing to do. There are strategic reasons why this could be a good thing to do but it's hard to say no to giant piles of money even if you already have giant piles of money so we were certain Microsoft wasn't going to stick to this principle.

It wasn’t marketed that way. It was a throwaway line that became a meme at Ignite back in 2015

It was meant to convey the change in delivery model for Windows updates.

Windows 10 and 11 are the same kernel from a CI/CD perspective, just run winver and see for yourself. The Win10 and Win11 paint jobs are not something the engineers have any power over.

A Microsoft employee tasked with public relations declaring it so at a Microsoft event in front of the press is Microsoft marketing it that way.

A Microsoft employee tasked with teaching devs how to write LiveTiles.

I.e. an official Microsoft representative, again, in front of the press, said it. It was repeated ad nauseam by the press and they made no attempt to correct it - in fact they went around getting the press to say similar things like "Once your device is upgraded to Windows 10, it will continue to be supported for the lifetime of the device at no cost". That's an official binding statement on the company if I ever did see one.

https://globalnews.ca/news/2135677/what-you-need-to-know-bef...

> in front of the press

No. He was in front of a crowd of developers in a developer training seminar and trying to overhype the buy in of live tiles to suggest they wouldn't be deprecated.

Your defense here is "Microsoft made this promise in front of a different group of people than the press with different financial motives than to get people to use windows so they shouldn't be bound by it"?

a) That's absurd, that's clearly still a reason they should be bound by it

b) That it wasn't in front of the the is clearly false given press widely reported on it, if it wasn't in front of the press they couldn't have reported on it.

c) That it wasn't intended to convince people to use windows is clearly false given Microsoft's simultaneous purely public facing marketing of windows as a thing that would be supported for the lifetime of the device... Microsoft's continued endorsement of the sentiment behind the quote, and Microsoft's decision to not disavow the quote when journalists no doubt asked about it.

Also, a journalist on some blog saying something isn't some official binding statement. If they wrote "gpm promised free pancakes for all hackernews posters forever" would that also be an official binding statement to hold you to? Where are my pancakes?

Are you seriously comparing a major national newspaper, a core and reputable component of a multi billion dollar business, to "some blog". You'd moved into bad faith arguments awhile ago but that is really beyond the pale.

Substantially the same quote is available elsewhere, it's a newspaper repeating an official position.

Your main point was based on an untrue statement of "in front of the press" and attributing their writers making statements as official binding correspondence from a company and yet you say I'm making bad faith arguments. It wasn't a press event, it was a developer training session.

A newspaper repeating an official position that can't be found anywhere else other than a guy giving a talk about live tiles and other news sites like this. And yet we don't care about that he also stated live tiles weren't going away and yet that clearly wasn't true either.

And in the end even if we take an article written by someone unaffiliated with Microsoft as a contract that now binds Microsoft forever, what's "the life of the device"? The warranty period? Two years? Five years? One hundred years?

Where are my pancakes? I saw someone wrote you were going to give free pancakes. After all we have to hold people to things they never officially stated just because other unrelated people keep repeating it.

My main point continues to be entirely true, the statement was unambiguously made in front of the press, as proved by the press quoting it.

The same statement as quoted by the newspaper (note: not a blog) globalnews can in fact be found elsewhere, quoted by other press sites. I didn't find the original - perhaps it was taken down or only made in a press release - but since e.g. arstechnica includes it in literal quotes I have no doubt that this is a literal quote of an official microsoft position..

Considering your continued bad faith arguments, and apparently deliberate mistatements of facts, I will now stop responding to you.

I've seen multiple posts now suggesting you're giving free pancakes. Where are these pancakes? You haven't said you aren't giving pancakes, must be true.

> and apparently deliberate mistatements of facts

Yeah, you should stop misstating facts like "Microsoft employee tasked with public relations declaring it so at a Microsoft event in front of the press is Microsoft marketing it that way", because that's not what happened.

> as proved by the press quoting it.

The quotes you see are from the recordings of the event. Are Netflix movies also statements given to the press? You can go watch it today. Instead you'll ignore actually looking into it and say I'm just making misstatements despite you not even knowing the source and the history of it.

A good article talking about this as well:

https://web.archive.org/web/20211014012149/https://www.pcwor...

On the other hand, there is no reason you have to calibrate your principles to some random metric of "most"

Win11 doesn’t support all hardware Win10 runs on. Free upgrade is meaningless in that sense.

> I know people love to hate on Microsoft

People rag on a company that is trying to force you to use an online account to log onto your local PC?

Doesn't using Windows Backup to qualify for these extended Windows 10 security updates require that you purchase more than the default amount of cloud storage too?

they don’t force you to use an online account

They make it close to impossible to install windows without making an account, you either need to mess around in the registry or run some weird Powershell commands in order to skip the account creation step. They do this because they know a non-technical person will just create an account instead. It's fucking bullshit and it is 100% intentional.

Actually, I discovered that, as long as the machine has a TPM and it is turned on, I can just set it (Win 11) up initially with a throwaway MS account. Then, I add local admin and user accounts and, using the admin account, I delete the MS account. I have done it many times now. It’s easier than all of the other crap trying to avoid that MS account.

this is not true, you can just create a local account with Windows 11 Pro and not use the online stuff at all.

No, you can't. Not with any of the Consumer versions. You have to do the workarounds to not have your initial account be an online account.

I've recently had to reinstall Windows 10 and the screen that forces you to create an account is impossible to skip through normal means. I first tried registry hacks (commonly found in Google) only to find out that this method no longer works. I then tried the Powershell command (which is the same as for Windows 11) and this was the only thing that actually worked.

Technically being able to opt out of a Microsoft account by solving a puzzle wrapped in a riddle that Microsoft changes every few months is as close to forced as their legal team is willing to go.

Well they sure as hell make it difficult! I had to install Windows on a new PC and the "remove the ethernet cable" trick no longer worked.

> they offered a free upgrade to Windows 11

I wish. I have a completely capable machine that won't accept the upgrade, due to some completely artificial requirements MSFT built in.

> a free upgrade to Windows 11

My very expensive tower PC can't "up"grade because it doesn't have a TPM 2.0 module. So unless Microsoft plans to give me a new CPU (and new mobo) it's not free for many users.

TPM requirement can be bypassed with a registry edit, however this does not lift the requirements of the user apps that rely on TPM functions (such as Adobe CC or certain game anticheats).

I don't really blame Microsoft for stopping updates. That's fine. But they're also preventing anyone else from doing any updates.

And no one said the situation with Android devices is great.

It's not a free upgrade if you have no choice

"support"

In other words continue to supply the proprietary software that runs on my hardware.

How about, if you can't or won't "support" your product anymore, you are required to give away the source code.

We should be done holding users hostage.

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