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Windows 12 May Require a Subscription (www.pcmag.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

663 comments fedilink hide all child comments

[A]n INI configuration file in the Windows Canary channel, discovered by German website Deskmodder, includes references to a "Subscription Edition," "Subscription Type," and a "subscription status."

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

So yeah, there is almost zero chance of consumer grade windows requiring a subscription.

Microsoft already has more than 50,000,000 consumers (not businesses) on Office 365 personal or family plans. It's a small step from there to adding Microsoft 365 Cloud PC to it. With a marketing push people will gladly buy cheap WinBooks to connect in. You can do it NOW if you wanted too, all of the low cost hardware already exists as do the Windows VDs, it's just not being packaged for and marketed directly to consumers yet.

I strongly suspect that Windows 12 will come with two licensing models "Install on your own hardware" and "License for Virtual Desktop". Over time Microsoft will push ever harder to get people to go for the second one. They did it exactly like this with Office and it worked quite well.

[+] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

MS Office has long been replaced with Google Docs.

No it hasn't. My Son is currently in Engineering School here in the States and MSO is a requirement. My Niece is working on her BSN at a different College and MSO is a requirement.

Then you graduate and find out that nearly every business is also using MSO and you'll be interacting with it daily at work. So when you get home and need to type something up...well...there's a reason that Microsoft has 50 Million subscribers to it's MS Family Plan.

[+] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

So what you are saying is that MS is still incentivizing universities with cheap copies and licenses so that companies will use MS Office?

What I'm saying is that despite anyone's thoughts or feelings MSO is in no way shape or form dead. It is the standard that all other Office Applications and Suites are judged against. None of us have to like it but its not going anywhere. Windows itself will die before MSO does.

That doesn’t mean that you, as a consumer...

As someone who installed Slackware 3.1 from floppy disk in 1996 I'm a veteran of the OS and Application Holy Wars. The fact is our wishes don't matter, most businesses will make the easy purchase, most users will follow along with that at home and the easy purchase is Microsoft.

Microsoft has already shown success at getting Home Users to sign up for Microsoft Family in order to get MSO. So while us olds may remember the "better" GUIs of previous versions of Office, which were hated in their day too, there's now over a decade of users who are used to the Ribbon. When they fire up Open or Libre all they think is "Ewww, this looks old!" You may as well tell them to install WordPerfect 7.