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View Full Version : Prediction #1: Windows Free within 15 Years



Gijith
August 19th, 2006, 06:23 PM
I have to think that within the next 15 years, Microsoft will be chargin $0 for a basic 'household' copy of Windows. Or close to $0. Maybe there will be patent issues that will incur some small cost passed onto the consumer.

Thoughts?

djsroknrol
August 19th, 2006, 06:26 PM
I think that they will go to an online version of their OS

GuitarHero
August 19th, 2006, 06:26 PM
Theres no reason to post this twice.

Gijith
August 19th, 2006, 06:27 PM
Sorry, it was an accidental double post. Edited the 1st one.

Tomosaur
August 19th, 2006, 06:28 PM
Again, what is your reasoning behind this?

Gijith
August 19th, 2006, 06:37 PM
Just that eventually a company, probably one that no one suspects at the moment, will release a free (or very close to free) OS that can actually compete. I'll go out on a limb and assume that, at this point, Microsoft will have already moved most of its software, including Office, online to compete with similar products (Google blah blah blah). I'll also assume that most of their profits will be in advertising at this point, leading them to take a risk and cut the price of Windows in order to keep some user base. Windows will still be valuable to them, as it could be used to point users toward their services and ads.

zubrug
August 19th, 2006, 06:43 PM
Mmmm, maybe beer will be free as well! Then if I drink enough free beer I might think about switching back to windows.
At best I think you will see a significant price drop as linux will own a more of the market share. Security and Privacy will play bigger roles in the decision of what operating system they trust.

As in Homeland Security reccommending the download of a patch, Mmmmm!
Love a good conspiracy!

mips
August 19th, 2006, 06:45 PM
The majority of the world does not have broadband and I do not forsee the majority of people having broadband in 15yrs time in order to use a online desktop.

Polygon
August 19th, 2006, 06:47 PM
online desktop? i would hate that. then you would not be able to customize a ton of things, like hardware. not to mention i dont think we will make a super large jump in computing power in 15 years.

Gijith
August 19th, 2006, 06:56 PM
No, I don't think we'll have a very good online desktop at that point. But I do think that most functionality, such as word processing or listening to music, will be done online.

I definitely do think that in 15 years, the vast majority of worldwide users will have something equal to today's broadband.

Wallakoala
August 19th, 2006, 06:57 PM
In 15 years windows might not even exist.

But if it does, a free version of some kind would be possible.

GuitarHero
August 19th, 2006, 07:57 PM
I doubt a fully online desktop or even office suite catches on for another 20-25 years at least. More internet integrated desktops may pop up but until we have insane internet connections online desktops will never be fast enough.

saracen
August 19th, 2006, 08:11 PM
You are all too quick to forget. Just 10 years ago i'm sure that the majority of you were stuck behind a 14.4 or 28.8K modem. Now most of us have at least a couple of Megabits. In Japan you can get a 100Mb/s connection for $35 a month. In 10 years I guarantee you that most of us will have 100Mb/s which would be more than enough to run an online OS.

And those who think that computing power will not jump sufficiently in 15 years. Think of what you were running 15 years ago and compare it to what you have today. There is around a 1000 fold increase in computing power and an even greater increase in terms of space availability. Just 10 years ago a 500MB drive was top of the line. Today 500GB isn't even the largest on the market.

I don't know whether or not windows will be around in 15 years, but I'm certain that if it is, it will be a vastly different piece of software than it is today. The trend for having thin clients is already evident. If we could strip down the hardware requirements of the client and do most processing/storage on the server it would pave the way for vastly more practical mobile devices with longer battery lives. I'd much prefer to be carrying around a wafer thin device that is pretty much just a screen and takes input and produces output (video and sound) which I can use anywhere since broadband will definitely be ubiquitous in 15 years.

djsroknrol
August 19th, 2006, 09:34 PM
You are all too quick to forget. Just 10 years ago i'm sure that the majority of you were stuck behind a 14.4 or 28.8K modem. Now most of us have at least a couple of Megabits. In Japan you can get a 100Mb/s connection for $35 a month. In 10 years I guarantee you that most of us will have 100Mb/s which would be more than enough to run an online OS.

And those who think that computing power will not jump sufficiently in 15 years. Think of what you were running 15 years ago and compare it to what you have today. There is around a 1000 fold increase in computing power and an even greater increase in terms of space availability. Just 10 years ago a 500MB drive was top of the line. Today 500GB isn't even the largest on the market.

I don't know whether or not windows will be around in 15 years, but I'm certain that if it is, it will be a vastly different piece of software than it is today. The trend for having thin clients is already evident. If we could strip down the hardware requirements of the client and do most processing/storage on the server it would pave the way for vastly more practical mobile devices with longer battery lives. I'd much prefer to be carrying around a wafer thin device that is pretty much just a screen and takes input and produces output (video and sound) which I can use anywhere since broadband will definitely be ubiquitous in 15 years.

Here here...that's why I think it will happen...besides, I think the biggest factor fueling it twords online will be that more people will be looking for stablity and security or just want to switch in general and a good portion of servers run Linux.

What a better way to be secure than online where the hastle of crashes and other maladies is removed from the user and managed by the server?...I for one think that a Linux served OS product of their's would do ok..for whoever needed a service such as that....

I also think that MS's business model has to change for it to survive in the future. They know(or they think and act) that their "future" is on the web. It's inevtiable, I think, and what a "new" product to sell to a customer base that's already use to the brandname?

RavenOfOdin
August 19th, 2006, 09:58 PM
Mmmm, maybe beer will be free as well! Then if I drink enough free beer I might think about switching back to windows.
At best I think you will see a significant price drop as linux will own a more of the market share. Security and Privacy will play bigger roles in the decision of what operating system they trust.

As in Homeland Security reccommending the download of a patch, Mmmmm!
Love a good conspiracy!

:rolleyes:

I assume you own every novel that Tom Clancy has ever written?

Anyway, to have some sort of relevance to the topic. . .its possible, but if advertising would be where the bulk of MS profits lie, will we start seeing some
MS adware or advertisements? Its not too far of a leap, given what they already tried with XP.

bjweeks
August 19th, 2006, 10:00 PM
:rolleyes:

I assume you own every novel that Tom Clancy has ever written?

I have..... :-\"

blastus
August 19th, 2006, 10:33 PM
There is no real competition for Windows so Microsoft has absolutely no incentive for reducing its price or selling it for free. The only thing that drives prices down is competition. If nothing radical happens in the markets, Microsoft will continue increasing the cost of Windows indefinitely to the point where it may be higher than the cost of the PC that runs it.

At some point or another, Microsoft will start a program where you can subscribe to a license to use Windows for a monthly or yearly fee, as opposed to buying a perpetual license. When Microsoft is ready to phase out perpetual licenses, they will make it cheaper (and therefore more attractive) for consumers to subscribe to Windows rather than buy it, by either increasing the cost of the perpetual license and/or reducing the cost of the subscription.

There may also multiple levels of subscriptions each offering a certain subset of functionality in Windows. This will be likened to the fact that different versions of Windows (for example Home vs Professional) offer different features and are priced differently. The subscription model will allow for finer control over the features of Windows that are available to consumers--this like is a divide and conquer strategy where features in Windows will be itemized and have costs attached to them (like on a telephone or bank statement) in order to *justify* the cost to the consumer.

Microsoft will aggressively market the subscription idea as the ultimate way for the consumer to *save* money on Windows. The selling points will be;

1. The consumer will no longer have to pay upfront for the cost of Windows when they buy a new PC.

2. The consumer won't have to pay for upgrades to Windows anymore since they are simply renting the product instead of owning it--however Microsoft will never use the word "rent" to market subscriptions.

3. The consumer will only have to pay for the features of Windows that they *need* instead of paying for everything (a.k.a. the *complete* product.)

Once Microsoft has completely phased out perpetual licenses, they will increase the cost of the subscriptions and eventually make them much more expensive than perpetual licenses could have even been reasonably sold for.

aysiu
August 20th, 2006, 03:34 AM
saracen has some good input. 15 years makes a s-load of difference in the home computing world.

15 years ago, Windows 95 hadn't even come out. There were no browser wars. Few people had internet access, and those that did had dial-up. I didn't have an email address and none of my friends did either.

Technology is changing at a faster rate today than back then, too. Microsoft may still be around as a company, but the operating system you run may be as transparent to you for home computing as it is for TiVo.

The more we get into people synching their Firefox bookmarks online and putting personal files on Google servers, etc., the faster the internet connections and processing speeds of computers get, the more people will do online, and it won't matter at all if you're using Windows, Linux, or Mac.

Online applications will run at such speeds, that you would think it's a joke to "install" an application on your own computer because you would go to kiosks anywhere (or your new pocket-size cell phone that expands to a mini-laptop... or some "computer" that's a contact lens in your eye) and have access to whatever DRM'ed applications you're subscribed to at some other centralized company (not necessarily Microsoft) who has control of the market because they were the first to have these subscription applications that could be accessed anywhere...

... and if what I'm saying is close at all to the truth of what will happen, that company looks like Google... which runs on Linux servers and has specialized versions of Ubuntu.

It's really hard to imagine fifteen years from now. What did we use for web browsing in 1991... Lynx? I guess some people in these forums still use Lynx, but there are very few Firefox v. Lynx battles over here--most are Firefox v. Opera v. Epiphany.

In 1991, there's no way I could have imagined online shopping, online banking, portable music players that could hold your entire CD collection, USB keys, digital cameras, free operating systems that were advanced... or any operating systems that were advanced, email... it's insanity to try to imagine computing 15 years from now!

Blondie
August 20th, 2006, 08:26 AM
You are all too quick to forget. Just 10 years ago i'm sure that the majority of you were stuck behind a 14.4 or 28.8K modem. Now most of us have at least a couple of Megabits. In Japan you can get a 100Mb/s connection for $35 a month. In 10 years I guarantee you that most of us will have 100Mb/s which would be more than enough to run an online OS.

And those who think that computing power will not jump sufficiently in 15 years. Think of what you were running 15 years ago and compare it to what you have today. There is around a 1000 fold increase in computing power and an even greater increase in terms of space availability. Just 10 years ago a 500MB drive was top of the line. Today 500GB isn't even the largest on the market.

I see increasing computing power as acting against the use of an online OS. Why risk not being able to do any work if your connection goes down whenever you can have a small PC two hundred times more powerful than a current desktop PC and they're giving them away with packets of cornflakes? Where's the advantage in an online OS just because the connections are fast enough to do it? Answer - cheaper and / or smaller hardware, but if powerful hardware is cheap and small anyway....

Present day laptops and notebooks are not that much bigger than you'd ever want them to be because you'd want a big enough screen and a reasonable enough sized keyboard to actually do work.

saracen
August 20th, 2006, 05:47 PM
It's really hard to imagine fifteen years from now. What did we use for web browsing in 1991... Lynx? I guess some people in these forums still use Lynx, but there are very few Firefox v. Lynx battles over here--most are Firefox v. Opera v. Epiphany.

Just as an FYI, the web as we know it was born on Aug. 6, 1991 (http://groups.google.com/group/alt.hypertext/tree/browse_frm/thread/7824e490ea164c06/f61c1ef93d2a8398?rnum=1&hl=en&q=group%3Aalt.hypertext+author%3ATim+author%3ABern ers-Lee&_done=%2Fgroup%2Falt.hypertext%2Fbrowse_frm%2Fthre ad%2F7824e490ea164c06%2Ff61c1ef93d2a8398%3Ftvc%3D1 %26q%3Dgroup%3Aalt.hypertext+author%3ATim+author%3 ABerners-Lee%26hl%3Den%26#doc_06dad279804cb3ba). The first real browser was Mosaic (later became Netscape) and it was developed for X Windows in February 1993. So before that point i'd venture to say that no one on this forum really had internet.

aysiu
August 20th, 2006, 05:56 PM
Just as an FYI, the web as we know it was born on Aug. 6, 1991 (http://groups.google.com/group/alt.hypertext/tree/browse_frm/thread/7824e490ea164c06/f61c1ef93d2a8398?rnum=1&hl=en&q=group%3Aalt.hypertext+author%3ATim+author%3ABern ers-Lee&_done=%2Fgroup%2Falt.hypertext%2Fbrowse_frm%2Fthre ad%2F7824e490ea164c06%2Ff61c1ef93d2a8398%3Ftvc%3D1 %26q%3Dgroup%3Aalt.hypertext+author%3ATim+author%3 ABerners-Lee%26hl%3Den%26#doc_06dad279804cb3ba). The first real browser was Mosaic (later became Netscape) and it was developed for X Windows in February 1993. So before that point i'd venture to say that no one on this forum really had internet.
Thanks for the clarification.

Adamant1988
August 20th, 2006, 07:37 PM
What I see happening in the near future is the web becoming so important that the OS you run truly becoms irrelevent. I see the days when you walk into *insert store name here* and buy software for your system are gone. Instead your software may be available for a small subscription fee, or a one time fee from various 'repos' for large stores. however at the rate computer technology is going I doubt we will ever find it necessary to store absolutely everything on a server and go 100% thin-client.

What I imagine happening is that computers will be reliant on the internet for getting new programs and such, but every application you have on the server will be able to run on your computer without the need for an internet connection at that moment, and for things like word processors (think: writely) they will automatically sync up with your locally stored counterpart for the program. *shrug*

Johnsie
August 20th, 2006, 07:52 PM
They don't need to make it free yet... They already have control over the O/S market and that has barely changed over the last 5 years. Using Linux all the time and visiting linux websites all the time sometimes makes you forget that how few people actually use Linux or Macos. It also gives you the false illusion that Linux is growing faster than it really is.

I have read many reports that suggest between 0% and 5% of web users use Linux. They yearly reports do say that Linux has grown but only by 1 or 2 percent over the last 5 years.

Mathiasdm
August 20th, 2006, 08:14 PM
Just as an FYI, the web as we know it was born on Aug. 6, 1991 (http://groups.google.com/group/alt.hypertext/tree/browse_frm/thread/7824e490ea164c06/f61c1ef93d2a8398?rnum=1&hl=en&q=group%3Aalt.hypertext+author%3ATim+author%3ABern ers-Lee&_done=%2Fgroup%2Falt.hypertext%2Fbrowse_frm%2Fthre ad%2F7824e490ea164c06%2Ff61c1ef93d2a8398%3Ftvc%3D1 %26q%3Dgroup%3Aalt.hypertext+author%3ATim+author%3 ABerners-Lee%26hl%3Den%26#doc_06dad279804cb3ba). The first real browser was Mosaic (later became Netscape) and it was developed for X Windows in February 1993. So before that point i'd venture to say that no one on this forum really had internet.
The web, yes. The internet? Nope.

ThirdWorld
August 25th, 2006, 07:28 AM
In the near future, maybe in 10 to 15 years, most computers will be just a ultra thin flat monitor with a wireless mouse (or something better) and a keyboard and laptops will be very powerful, small, thin tablets with batteries that will run for days. Video cards and hdd drives will be as small as SD cards and they will be Hot-swappable. Most students will not have any books, but inexpensive laptop like tablets with digital versions of books.

in 15 years we will not recognize computers anymore, the line between online-OS and a pc will be blury and we will wonder why in 2007 our computers were so big, expensive, power hungry and noisy.

ThirdWorld
August 25th, 2006, 07:36 AM
one more thing, people will joke about blueray dvds and "those big and bulky CD'S players" of the 90's and the first decade of the 21 century. same way we joke about old floppy drives.

DoctorMO
August 25th, 2006, 08:05 AM
You can't really predict the next 15 years based on the last 15. take the time between 1976 and 1991, erratic and completely insane.

Assuming we're all still alive in 15 years, I'd predict a stable release of the 3.0 kernel.