Windows 10 Available on July 29

[Lady Fitzgerald]

The biggest fear I have, which has been discussed very little, is MS is priming us for forced cloud computing before it is ready for prime time (which I doubt will happen in my lifetime), if only because cloud development was Nadella's baby before he replaced Ballsmore (sic). Frankly, I think MS' controlling shareholders and the Board have been watching too many episodes of CSI and Bones.

It has been discussed quite a lot, I have been participating quite a many of those discussions, and will post the same as I have always posted in those conversations:

Please explain how on earth are you "forced to" or MS is "priming us" to cloud computing? Install with a local account, don't connect to online services like OneDrive, Skype or third party services like Dropbox and so on, how on earth can you call that cloud computing any more than the cloud computing you already do and have done since since over 20 years, beginning of the WWW era?

MS is not forcing anything. They could have removed the local account option but they didn't.

Read what I already said (bolded above). Add to that the cloud services you already mentioned and Office 365. Sure, they are optional for now (hence, the priming comment) but for how long will they continue to be? I do use the cloud for some purposes, such as shopping, banking, auxiliary offsite backups, and data access when away from home, but I do not run any apps in the cloud (and certainly not for the past 20 years; I've had broadband internet only for the past five or six years), such as word processing and other office apps, data storage, etc. Those get done from my computers and are not dependent on internet access.

 

[Kari]

What I meant with the 20+ years of us using cloud is the Internet as we know it today. Inventing of the www in early 90's started an expansion in cloud computing. Today the only possibility to use absolutely no cloud services, no cloud computing at all, is to never connect your PC to network.

You use email? That's a cloud service, more than Windows 8, 8.1 or 10 ever. Not a single Windows 10 app is in the cloud, they are all locally installed on your computer. About the email: especially with IMAP and Exchange type email services but clearly also with POP, your incoming messages are stored in the cloud (server) and you need to retrieve them with a client (a browser is also a client) over the network to handle them. The same with outgoing messages; you send them to the cloud where they are handled and "cleared" and sent further to the recipient.

When you watch a YouTube video, an episode of Game of Thrones from HBO or House of Cards from Netflix, you use the cloud. When you upload a video to Facebook for your family and friends to see, you use a cloud service as do your family and friends when they watch it. When you check CNN website for the news, you use a cloud service: data is stored somewhere else on servers, you use your local client to retrieve that data for local processing.

Quite a many of us users use local cloud without even realizing we are doing it. Network storage, what else is it than a local cloud?

Cloud computing has existed decades and we are all using it all the time. Without cloud we wouldn't have these forums, a cloud service where the information (data) is stored on servers and retrieved to our computers over the network when and in the extent we want to.

I have absolutely no understanding for this whining about how Microsoft in general and Windows 10 in particular are "forcing users to the cloud". These whiners have really missed something important: Windows 10 with a local account and never signing in to any online services is in absolutely no way any more "in the cloud" than for instance Windows XP was. It is possible to install Windows 10 on a PC which does not even have a network adapter, install office and productivity applications on it and use it for novel writing or budget planning or to create video art or whatnot, never connecting it to any network and cloud whatsoever.

Really.

Kari

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

What I meant with the 20+ years of us using cloud is the Internet as we know it today. Inventing of the www in early 90's started an expansion in cloud computing. Today the only possibility to use absolutely no cloud services, no cloud computing at all, is to never connect your PC to network.

You use email? That's a cloud service, more than Windows 8, 8.1 or 10 ever. Not a single Windows 10 app is in the cloud, they are all locally installed on your computer. About the email: especially with IMAP and Exchange type email services but clearly also with POP, your incoming messages are stored in the cloud (server) and you need to retrieve them with a client (a browser is also a client) over the network to handle them. The same with outgoing messages; you send them to the cloud where they are handled and "cleared" and sent further to the recipient.

When you watch a YouTube video, Game of Thrones from HBO or House of Cards from Netflix, you use the cloud. When you upload a video to Facebook for your family and friends to see, you use a cloud service as do your family and friends when they watch it.

Quite a many of us users use local cloud without even realizing we are doing it. Network storage, what else is it than a local cloud?

Cloud computing has existed decays and we are all using it all the time. Without cloud we wouldn't have these forums, a cloud service where the information (data) is stored on servers and retrieved to our computers over the network when and in extent we want to.

I have absolutely no understanding for this whining about how Microsoft in general and Windows 10 in particular are "forcing users to the cloud". These whiners have really missed something important: Windows 10 with a local account and never signing in to any online services is in absolutely no way any more "in the cloud" than for instance Windows XP was. It is possible to install Windows 10 on a PC which does not even have a network adapter, install office and productivity applications on it and use it novel writing a budget planning or to create video art, never connecting it to any network and cloud whatsoever.

Really.

Kari

You are still missing the point. Yes, there is a lot of cloud computing we now do and have been doing for some time. And as you pointed out, productivity programs can now be bought and put onto a computer that isn't connected to a network or the cloud. What I am saying, with the new cloud services and the cloud based Office 365 that MS has been pushing plus the fact that MS' CEO was formerly in charge of cloud development, it is not unrealistic to suspect that MS may someday make cloud computing, including the OS, the only option available, especially since they hide the ability to opt out of some of the cloud services, such as a Microsoft account (and I don't object to the account itself; the issue I have with one is I'm required to enable ALL cookies, not just MS', to be able to get one).

 

[Kari]

Cloud is not a new thing. What's new is that someone coined a phrase, a word Cloud to describe it about the same time when the enterprise sector started to realize that storing all data on own servers in that hot windowless room in the basement might not be such a good idea, and started to buy external storage services.

An existing thing got a new name; a lot of recent "cloudophobia" is and happens only because we started to speak about cloud computing using the name "cloud". The phrase is new, what it means has been here quite a long time. Since beginning of the Internet.

 

[groze]

I found a good website on cloud computing that might fit this discussion.

Cloud computing - A simple introduction - Explain that Stuff

 

[Kari]

You are still missing the point. Yes, there is a lot of cloud computing we now do and have been doing for some time. And as you pointed out, productivity programs can now be bought and put onto a computer that isn't connected to a network or the cloud. What I am saying, with the new cloud services and the cloud based Office 365 that MS has been pushing plus the fact that MS' CEO was formerly in charge of cloud development, it is not unrealistic to suspect that MS may someday make cloud computing, including the OS, the only option available, especially since they hide the ability to opt out of some of the cloud services, such as a Microsoft account (and I don't object to the account itself; the issue I have with one is I'm required to enable ALL cookies, not just MS', to be able to get one).

I am sorry but with your badly chosen example it looks like it's you who are missing something.

Office 365 is not a cloud service; in fact the only things making it different than Office XP or 2007 or 2013 are 1.) the purchase and install method, monthly / yearly subscription and downloading the install files from the Internet vs. buying a DVD and installing from it, and 2.) an option to use large OneDrive storage included in Office 365 subscription. The end user naturally has no obligations to use this option if he / she so decides. It's not forced on you.

Other than that the Office 365 is a suite of desktop applications you install locally to your computer without any need whatsoever to save your files on OneDrive or in any other way use the "cloud".

You can not make me believe that Windows will some day be used with dumb terminals, that I will no longer be able to install the OS on my PC. Google tried something to that direction, the Chrome OS has not been a success.

Do not mix subscription based services (software & OS) and cloud. I am an Office 365 subscriber but my Office suite of programs is very much installed locally, on each of the computers I have.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

You are still missing the point. Yes, there is a lot of cloud computing we now do and have been doing for some time. And as you pointed out, productivity programs can now be bought and put onto a computer that isn't connected to a network or the cloud. What I am saying, with the new cloud services and the cloud based Office 365 that MS has been pushing plus the fact that MS' CEO was formerly in charge of cloud development, it is not unrealistic to suspect that MS may someday make cloud computing, including the OS, the only option available, especially since they hide the ability to opt out of some of the cloud services, such as a Microsoft account (and I don't object to the account itself; the issue I have with one is I'm required to enable ALL cookies, not just MS', to be able to get one).

I am sorry but with your badly chosen example it looks like it's you who are missing something.

Office 365 is not a cloud service; in fact the only things making it different than Office XP or 2007 or 2013 are 1.) the purchase and install method, monthly / yearly subscription and downloading the install files from the Internet vs. buying a DVD and installing from it, and 2.) an option to use large OneDrive storage included in Office 365 subscription. The end user naturally has no obligations to use this option if he / she so decides. It's not forced on you.

Other than that the Office 365 is a suite of desktop applications you install locally to your computer without any need whatsoever to save your files on OneDrive or in any other way use the "cloud".

You can not make me believe that Windows will some day be used with dumb terminals, that I will no longer be able to install the OS on my PC. Google tried something to that direction, the Chrome OS has not been a success.

Do not mix subscription based services (software & OS) and cloud. I am an Office 365 subscriber but my Office suite of programs is very much installed locally, on each of the computers I have.

You are correct: I was wrong saying Office 365 is a cloud service, not a subscription service. However, I did NOT say we are going to have cloud computing forced on us. I said I suspect we may have it forced on us someday. After all, MS does have a cloud development department, the one the current CEO used to head up. Just because Chrome OS is not doing well doesn't mean MS wouldn't think it could do better (whether it could or not is an entirely different debate). One thing that would make a cloud OS attractive for MS would be it would ensure the OS everyone uses will always be up to date.

 

[Arc]

What I am saying, with the new cloud services and the cloud based Office 365 that MS has been pushing plus the fact that MS' CEO was formerly in charge of cloud development, it is not unrealistic to suspect that MS may someday make cloud computing, including the OS, the only option available, especially since they hide the ability to opt out of some of the cloud services, such as a Microsoft account (and I don't object to the account itself; the issue I have with one is I'm required to enable ALL cookies, not just MS', to be able to get one).

Someday there will be apocalypse. Let us panic collectively!

 

[mjf]

"Cloud Computing" concepts have been around for decades. It's partly about centralized/dedicated vs distributed/shared computing. This "vision" by Gilder is often quoted:
INTO THE FIBERSPHERE
As an undergrad I needed to use the computer center facilities (awful) as a post grad I could use a dedicated PDP/11 computer (less power than a $200 notebook) but still bliss. I have loved a centralized computing capability ever since the introduction of the IBM XT type clones.

Distributed data access on the other hand is a tremendous capability that the internet provides and I don't consider it cloud computing.

Cloud computing relies on the development of a global network capability and allows software providers a continued revenue stream by lock in. I am not a supporter.

 

[cluberti]

I'll be shipping tinfoil hats - as long as there are alternative operating systems, I don't think the end will come as some predict. Even if Microsoft heads into the rather menacing avenues some of you predict, there will always be alternatives.

 

[Arc]

I'll be shipping tinfoil hats -

I searched in the internet and got an image about it.

 

[cluberti]

Lol

 

[xips]

Why is MS giving away W10 and how are they going to pay for it? TANSTAAFL.

The only conclusion I can think of is advertising.

 

[cluberti]

They pay for it by getting most of their users onto the same platform, which allows them to get more 3rd party vendors to write apps that target Windows 8.x and 10 (both universal apps and win32 apps that conform to LUA security standards). This in turn convinces more people to buy/use Windows 10 devices, because the apps they want are available there. This potentially drives more sales of Windows 10 devices, which OEMs then pay Microsoft to ship Windows 10 on thus driving the first side of major Windows revenue. Enterprises start moving to Windows 10 because consumers have largely taken it up (this is precisely how Windows 98, XP, and Windows 7 took hold quickly in business environments too), which drives the other side of major Windows revenue.

Microsoft makes most of it's money in OS sales from enterprises and OEMs, not consumers. Giving it away free to people who already have a PC running a consumer version of Windows 7 or 8.1 doesn't cost Microsoft much of anything, because only a fraction of a percentage of those people would ever have purchased a new OS without also getting it with a new PC anyway.

TL'DR: It's already almost free, so giving it away to consumers as part of the "get as many people on Windows 10 to drive upgrades and enterprise licensing, and coerce devs to write new code for the platform" isn't necessarily a bad idea, nor one that costs Microsoft very much to do anyway.

 

[xips]

I dunno. Ad generated revenue is very lucrative. They can sell a subscription service to any who want to opt out of adware to ice their cake too.

 

[Boozad]

Advertising would be the biggest put off for any OS out there and would be corporate suicide for MS. Cluberti has already described the situation perfectly.

 

[xips]

I agree whole heartedly but keep coming back to Android.

 

[Arc]

I dunno. Ad generated revenue is very lucrative. They can sell a subscription service to any who want to opt out of adware to ice their cake too.

Advertising would be the biggest put off for any OS out there and would be corporate suicide for MS. Cluberti has already described the situation perfectly.

Please refer to post #111.

 

[xips]

Android is a precedent and not a conspiracy theory.

 

[Arc]

Android is a precedent and not a conspiracy theory.

My android does not throw advertisements. Some downloaded apps do, if a free version is installed. I should not blame android for it. Downloading and using such an app is my decision only.

There are reasons why I prefer windows phone, but that is beyond the scope of this thread.