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Windows 10 marks the end of 'pay once, use forever' software

Welcome to Microsoft's pay-pay-pay plan

This could even spread to hardware makers

I can also very much foresee a time when OEMs start introducing their own charges. PC makers are under constant pressure to cut production costs in what has become a cutthroat market.

They could be will be encouraged to offer, say, a one-year's free Windows subscription of the “basic” Windows with the PC that comes from them that can be upgraded to the full-featured and full-priced edition.

OEMs with Microsoft have track record: they tried upsell us from Windows Vista Home Basic on with its cut-price UI on low-specced and low-priced PCs to machines running Windows Home Premium, the version of the Home edition of Windows Vistat featuring the full Aero UI, media tools and Media Center that – surprise – required a PC with a fatter spec and price tag.

Also, I can foresee being spoon-fed particular feature-pack-like updates that are passed on to the OEM’s customers at extra cost on top of the basic machine.

The end of 'free' Windows 10 is already on the horizon.

Windows 10 will be made available on July 29 for free for a year for existing users of Windows 7 and 8. But then what? Microsoft is already starting to talk about “Windows as a Service." Anyone who knows anything about Microsoft and the IT industry in general knows what that means. The current trend among tech vendors is to flip you from paying a one-off fee for a product or service and to pay a monthly subscription. A regular fee eliminates the prospect of the unexpected: customers not paying for product failure, the Son of Vista, or the trail-off of new purchases that traditionally occur at the end of a product's lifecycle.

Microsoft isn't the only one in the client operating-system game – Apple is, too, with Mac OS X. Most of the recent (although admittedly cheap) OS X upgrades cost less than $25 but the base functionality doesn't really appear to change massively. Sure there may be a reasonable number of tweaks, but nothing earth shattering. Microsoft charges more than twice that for the various Windows 7 and 8 SKUs.

Steve Ballmer. Pic: Aanjhan Ranganathan

The software man who saw a services future for Microsoft – Steve Ballmer

The key difference, and the reason Apple charges so little for OS X versus a new edition of Windows from Microsoft, is that Apple is more concerned with having you upgrade to its latest hardware because it's a hardware company that does software and it can charge mightily for that hardware.

Microsoft, despite what former CEO Steve Ballmer would have you believe, is primarily a software company.

Windows 10 is coming in just over a week's time and this will, officially, be the last ever edition of the signature piece of software that not only bankrolled Microsoft but was a key foundation stone of its business.

I believe we face the prospect of paying for what was once given away with Windows 10. Microsoft has demonstrated a penchant for boxing up features in the past – it just didn't demand payment. Windows-as-a-service, rather than as a product, finally gives Microsoft the motive and the means to begin. ®

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