Windows 12 Subscription? What the...

[drinkingbird]

I don't buy at big box stores. There are other options.

And many times, you're right, the subscription is the cheaper and more value added option too. Some customers refuse to believe it though!

Less and less options these days, I can't even think of a "local" PC shop anymore. I never thought I'd miss CompUSA but they've been gone like 10 years (and that wasn't even really a local shop). We have no Frys around here, and the mom and pop places are long gone. I do stop in Adorama and B&H when I'm in NYC just to browse, takes me back to the old days. But regardless they're all in the $400 range unless they're reselling those same illegit keys. If you go on google shopping and search for office pro, you're hard pressed to find a legit key in there anywhere.

I do miss that Home Use Program through work (Office 2013 with 2 installs for $10, 2016 for $10, 2019 for $15). Prior to that I always had acccess to MSDN through work or Technet/Bizspark through myself. Technically those were subscription too but what you got made it totally worth it.

I was one of the ones reluctant to use the subscription model for 365 (well for many things I still am, I use a *cough* special version of Adobe Acrobat as the few PDFs I need to edit a year is not worth the like $99 a month they want for it). I also use Quicken heavily and feel that one doesn't really provide $40 a year worth of features, when before you could get 3 years for the same price, or free in my case, (and it would still work after that, just no transaction downloads), but there really is no alternative for what I use it for.

365 ended up being a no brainer for me, I was already paying $20 a year to use custom email domain with Outlook.com (that's where I outsourced my own email server to) and for $20 more got the latest office and 1TB of storage was not a tough decision (especially when I ended up getting 3 years free after paying for 2) I don't use it the way they want me to, I encrypt my nightly backups and upload it automatically, I can fill that 1TB no problem. And I ended up getting 5 years of personal for $80 and then paying the one time $10 to convert it to family so my parents could have their own accounts/installs too.

If I'm going to pay for a subscription, I'm going to give them a run for their money!

Enough rambling (reminiscing?). To think, I probably went 20 years without paying a dime for any software (via not so legal means) and then $100 a year for access to the entire MS suite (while still getting the rest of the stuff I used for free). Now I'm a mostly good law abiding citizen.

 

[sfx2000]

Could be worse - see Unity's terms for subscriptions... for many devs, -Q3 rthis is horrible situation...

At least MS has been, at best, a benevolent dictator - pay the tax and we basically leave you alone.

$99USD for Windows/Office/XBox/Cloud for 5 seats - and licensing based on the account, not on the HW, this actually makes a bit of sense, as there's a fair amount of value.

Going to @drinkingbird example - that's the same - however I wouldn't say it's a pre-managed device as this make recycling into the 2nd hand market a real pain - it's more about the initial login that pulls in all the ActiveDirectory profile info and sets up the machine accordingly... that includes things like Okta/Kolide and other items for auth to third party services...

Subscriptions are a very real thing - let's consider Apple - based on 2023Q3 results - Services (Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple News Plus, Apple Fitness, iCloud+) was second to the iPhone for revenue, and cost of goods shippped was the lowest of the three tracked - revenue was more than Mac and iPad, and the margin is much higher...

You know Microsoft is looking hard at this - not just for Windows PC's, but all the platforms that their SW runs on - Mac/Android/Chromebook...

At the end of the day - it's kind of a racket...

 

[drinkingbird]

this make recycling into the 2nd hand market a real pain

Actually been a problem with Apple for quite a while now, a school will upgrade their iPADs, macbooks, etc, let the students and/or teachers take them home, only to find out they're locked down and the IT guy with the password to release them from Apple's management is long gone. Friend of mine is a teacher and ran into that exact scenario. At least with chromebooks the enforcement is local (so far) and they can be bypassed and wiped.

It will be interesting when these new "modern managed" windows PCs start hitting ebay. It used to just be a matter of ensuring the BIOS wasn't locked (and in most cases you could bypass that) and as long as it wasn't, no other concerns. Now you'll end up with one that won't let you install windows without logging in to a corporate account, really no way to see that in advance.

Ours come with instructions to connect to wifi then let it sit for 5 mins before proceeding. In reality I didn't even notice that step and it worked fine, they're just trying account for different network conditions I guess. Curious what would happen if you set it up without network as a standard machine. They do say if your profile doesn't work to start over as it didn't sit long enough. But I have to assume that they'd know that the laptop is online and in use and it may keep attempting to lock it down or apply policies later.

From what the IT guy told me they have a dashboard and they can add and release easily, so I guess when it comes time to recycle/sell to the liquidator they just pull the M.2s out (probably not even, we use bitlocker) and scan the barcodes into Azure. As long as someone remembers.

Sadly most of our equipment goes to a company that runs it through the compactor/shredder, separates out the metals, and sells those. They actually have to provide a signed log of each item that goes in and the whole thing is video taped with ID's so you can audit it. I doubt they bother with laptops but network equipment and firewalls all go there. Millions of dollars turned into $50 of gold. And of course we pay good money for the service. Hard truth is it is cheaper than shipping it back to a warehouse, paying someone to wipe it all, palletizing it, and auctioning it off.

 

[drinkingbird]

pay the tax and we basically leave you alone.

I see it more as paying my penance for my younger years and all the cracks and keygens I used

$20 or so a year is pretty light punishment. I mean it is still possible to bypass and crack pretty much everything but every few months they fix it, you need to find a new one, it just became not worth it (a long time ago in reality).

I still remember the good old days of DOS and windows up until 95, where nothing had a key, all you needed was a stack of floppy disks and a friend and you could have your very own copy.