They won't keep giving them away for free. The free offer is just to encourage people to move to Windows 10. After a year it will cost to upgrade, and buying a license outright will cost from release day.
They are actually moving to a similar structure to Apple, or at least as close as they can get. From W10 onwards you will get a Windows license with all future upgrades to it included in the cost of buying a new device, the same as OSX. However in addition you can buy a license to apply to a machine you have built yourself, which you can't do with OSX. Making money from selling consumer OS's is dead. Microsoft have now realised this. Just look at Windows 8.1 with Bing. The pricing to OEMs of this software hasn't been officially released, but its believed to be free. Considering tablets like the HP Stream 7 are being sold for £50 with full 8.1 licenses and free Office 365, Microsoft clearly aren't making any money on the OS
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Its easy to forget that in terms of the whole market, buying a Windows license to apply to a self built PC is actually a pretty rare situation. Most devices out there will have come with Windows pre installed. The difference is it will now be just "Windows" installed, rather than a specific release of Windows.
The fact some Microsoft wording has started refering to it as WX (Windows X, as in 10) gives clues as to the model they are adopting... *cough* OSX *cough*
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They are actually moving to a similar structure to Apple, or at least as close as they can get. From W10 onwards you will get a Windows license with all future upgrades to it included in the cost of buying a new device, the same as OSX. However in addition you can buy a license to apply to a machine you have built yourself, which you can't do with OSX. Making money from selling consumer OS's is dead. Microsoft have now realised this. Just look at Windows 8.1 with Bing. The pricing to OEMs of this software hasn't been officially released, but its believed to be free. Considering tablets like the HP Stream 7 are being sold for £50 with full 8.1 licenses and free Office 365, Microsoft clearly aren't making any money on the OS
.Its easy to forget that in terms of the whole market, buying a Windows license to apply to a self built PC is actually a pretty rare situation. Most devices out there will have come with Windows pre installed. The difference is it will now be just "Windows" installed, rather than a specific release of Windows.
The fact some Microsoft wording has started refering to it as WX (Windows X, as in 10) gives clues as to the model they are adopting... *cough* OSX *cough*
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