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Windows 10: Buy cheap, buy twice, right? Buy FREE ... buy FOREVER
What I've got you've got to get it put it in you
I pity da fool
You think I’m joking. Check out the following clip from the programme, in which Beats headphones are being sported by those hippest of Sixties trend-setters, Bleep and Booster.
[Disclosure: I bought myself a pair of Beats in-ear phones recently in a sale and they’re OK. I am currently trying to destroy them with anti-culture by playing only early-1970s Tangerine Dream and Mike Oldfield on them. I like to think Dr Dre would be appalled.]
However, this theory doesn’t wash either: Microsoft already dominates the operating system market, most especially in the home, and Windows 10 does not stake out any new claims in that regard. Nor is Microsoft bludgeoning competitors out of the market. Giving Windows 10 away for free will not stop anybody – literally, not a single person – from switching to open source.
The daftest theory I’ve heard is that offering Windows 10 for free will encourage users to move away from older versions of Windows because Microsoft wants to stop supporting them. How does that work, then? It strikes me that 99% of all support calls taken by Microsoft at the moment will be from users having trouble with Windows 10. It would surely be in Microsoft’s own interest to dissuade users from upgrading at all, and support Windows 7 until the end of time.
A more compelling argument is that free software lulls users into comfort, then complacency, then reliance. Then, once you’re hooked and happy, an unexpected invoice gets slammed in your face.
There was an urban myth in the 1990s that Microsoft tacitly approved the uncontrolled piracy of Word, early versions of which under Windows and Mac alike did not seem terribly interested in asking for a serial number.
Logic would suggest that Microsoft was a chump for permitting this to happen for years with only the occasional squeak of protest. Yet what actually happened was that everyone at work, at home and in university ended up using the same hokey copy of MS Word that they’d “copied off a mate”. This in turn put pressure on the likes of DisplayWrite, WordPerfect and that god-awful word processor from Lotus to differentiate themselves from Microsoft’s inadvertent freebie.
Foolishly, what they did was to try and make themselves appear good value for money by adding more features. They could have tried to make the software faster or easier to use, but no, they all opted for the pizza approach: pile it high with toppings that no-one asked for, cram the lot into your face and poke it down with the handle of a wooden spoon.
Don’t blame Microsoft: WordPerfect and its ilk committed slow-motion suicide. Essentially, they turned themselves into bloatware and died as a natural consequence of morbid obesity. Only then did Microsoft start getting serious about licensing. It probably wasn’t too late to go back or look elsewhere, but by then we were hooked. Word .doc files had become “a standard” and for that privilege, it was time to start paying.
So yay for free software! But it comes with a simple health warning: Microsoft is spreading the love in order to bite us all on the arse later on. Rest assured, the company will find a way to get something from all this nothing. ®
Alistair Dabbs is a freelance technology tart, juggling IT journalism, editorial training and digital publishing. He observes the irony that, having watched other products fail by turning into bloatware, Microsoft proceeded to do the same with Word once it had a free rein to do anything it wanted. He suspects the sting in the tail of Windows 10 freebie will be subscription pricing, a la Adobe. It’s enough to make your hair stand on end. And turn white.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
