# Return on Investment (OS)



## Shrek (Jun 18, 2021)

I understand why the Mac OS is free, one has to buy the hardware to run it, but where is the return in investment for Windows 10? Sure new machines need a license, but I have 5 old machines that originally had Windows 7 and that entitled me to a free upgrade to Windows 10 and ongoing updates.

Is this a reasonable way to make money? and why move to Windows 11 if not to also move to a new pricing scheme?


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## phanbuey (Jun 18, 2021)

Do you mean for Microsoft?  It's a way for them to retain market share and have you continue using their stuff...

It's also a great way to keep competition and piracy at bay.  If they kept windows pricing the way it was, they risked an alternative gaming/user OS (i.e. steamOS, chrome) coming in and eating away at their marketshare. The return of more users is much greater than milking each individual customer to the maximum extent.

Not to mention what you did accounts for a tiny fraction of what most users do, most of their money comes from OEMs, companies, etc.  They don't really care that power users can use it for essentially "free" even though it officially costs "$199" for the pro version.


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## Jetster (Jun 18, 2021)

Mac OS is not free. You bought into "Think different" Now every upgrade, new hardware, software support is designed to keep you Apple.  Now they are nice and definitely have some advantages but not as versatile as IBM PC, which has the majority of the market by far, for a reason


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## Space Lynx (Jun 18, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> I understand why the Mac OS is free, one has to buy the hardware to run it, but where is the return in investment for Windows 10? Sure new machines need a license, but I have 5 old machines that originally had Windows 7 and that entitled me to a free upgrade to Windows 10 and ongoing updates.
> 
> Is this a reasonable way to make money? and why move to Windows 11 if not to also move to a new pricing scheme?



telemetry go nom nom nom for M$ profits. that's why they give you the free upgrade.  data and user behavior are king.


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## Shrek (Jun 18, 2021)

While I might be willing to pay a one time price for Windows 11, I would not be happy with a monthly or yearly subscription.


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## Space Lynx (Jun 18, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> While I might be willing to pay a one time price for Windows 11, I would not be happy with a monthly or yearly subscription.



I don't think you have to worry about that. M$ knows it has limits, and if they did that, they would push a lot of us to Linux. At least us PC builders, playing Steam games on Linux isn't nearly as hard as it used to be. So yeah, they wouldn't risk doing that. I sure as heck would be switching to Linux. lol


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## kayjay010101 (Jun 18, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> While I might be willing to pay a one time price for Windows 11, I would not be happy with a monthly or yearly subscription.


And that's probably why Windows 10 (and probably 11) doesn't have a subscription model. The rest of Microsoft's software stack does, because they know their customers are willing to pay a monthly/yearly fee for the software as opposed to a one-time payment. 
But with their OS there isn't as much willingness from the market to continously pay. In fact they'd probably lose more money from people moving to other solutions if they enacted a forced subscription to keep your Windows installation activated.
Though Windows 10 isn't really about the purchase anymore, they earn way more from gathering user data. That's also why they're not that adamant about punishing pirated/cracked activations and why they practically allow the entire OS to run without activation indefinitely.


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## Solaris17 (Jun 18, 2021)

Windows money like mentioned comes from OEMs and enterprise licensing.

Microsoft itself makes money from azure and products in the data center space like SQL or windows server.

about the only thing in the consumer space they make big profits on is office.

they don’t care about your windows 7 to 10 upgrade at all. Consumer windows is just a tool to keep you in a larger eco system so they can make money off of office or their game studios


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## qubit (Jun 18, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> While I might be willing to pay a one time price for Windows 11, I would not be happy with a monthly or yearly subscription.


You don’t have to worry about that. The real money is in the yearly Office 365 license that many people pay and their expensive server versions of Windows.

Market share is everything to Microsoft and they’ll do whatever it takes to keep it, including giving away the OS. It will be interesting to see the pricing model for W11, especially if it’s a free upgrade from W10.


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