Microsoft might have a price hike in store for Windows 10

[Cal Jeffrey]

Microsoft may be changing its pricing for Windows 10 according to ZDNet sources. With the release of Windows 10 Pro for Workstations, Redmond is considering restructuring its pricing system based on processor class.

“Microsoft will begin licensing the Windows 10 Desktop operating system by processor family, and all PCs sold with Intel Xeon workstation processors will be affected by this change," said ZDNet.

For processors with four cores or less, the increase will be about $70 per licensed machine. For Xeon rigs with more than four cores, the jump will be around $230 per system.

Similar pricing was mentioned in an e-mail from Dell to a customer back in September.

An engineering guide for OEMs that leaked on Twitter (below) indicates that Windows 10 Pro for Workstations will be required on “systems with Intel Xeon or AMD Opteron processors,” while being optional on other equipment.

The new Workstation version of Windows 10 is looking to provide support for features such as “Fast I/O with persistent memory, fast file sharing, Resilient file system (ReFS) and up to four physical CPUs and 6 TB of memory.”

Interesting excerpts from the Microsoft confidential document Windows 10 Pro for Workstations WEG (Windows Engineering Guide) #1 - Overview pic.twitter.com/t9Xk2kdv1D

— WZor (@WZorNET) October 6, 2017

Additionally, OEM suppliers have been notifying customers that Microsoft is extending its downgrade period for another year. Businesses will now be able to downgrade Windows 10 systems to Win 7 or 8.1 until October 31, 2018.

For enterprises with volume licensing, downgrading is at no cost since it is part of their agreement with Microsoft. However, smaller businesses without volume licensing are at the mercy of OEM licensing terms. This means that if a company wants to downgrade a Windows 10 system to an earlier version, it will be subjected to a downgrade fee.

This charge is nothing new but what is new is that the cost of Windows 10 with downgrade rights is going to increase. The OEM prices for Windows 10 with downgrade rights is going from $135 to $165. Considering Microsoft's heavy-handed push to get users to move from Windows 7 and 8.1 to 10, the downgrading increase is not too surprising.

Keep in mind that none of this is official. Sources of the new pricing information remained anonymous and there have been no formal announcements regarding pricing as of writing.

When asked about the rumors, a Microsoft spokesperson told ZDNet that the “company had no comment on the Windows 10 Pro for Workstations pricing.”

Windows 10 Pro for Workstations is supposed to be rolling out around the same time as the Fall Creators Update on October 17.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/71342-microsoft-might-have-price-hike-store-windows-10.html

 

[oldikes]

Oh come on, most people working in business IT already have a somewhat sour opinion of windows 10 despite begrudgingly using it. MS really wanna make it worse?

edited for clarity

 

[texasrattler]

Oh come on, most people already have a somewhat sour opinion of windows 10 despite begrudgingly using it. MS really wanna make it worse?

Worse for who? I have no issues with 10. The article is about business versions not retail/consumer versions of 10. From a business standpoint, makes a lot of sense and no they aren't the only ones who do this.

 

[Teko03]

This appears specifically apply to the "Windows 10 for Workstations" SKU, which is shipped with high end workstations which feature SERVER GRADE hardware. This will NOT affect consumers at home. This is already how they price Windows Server 2016 licenses. Basically, nothing to see here.

 

[EClyde]

That does it! I switching to ArcaOS 5.0

 

[Solar Flair]

This is the first time I have heard people need to pay in order to downgrade a system...
M$ seems trying everything to keep people use win10.
Bad M$!

 

[Spence1115]

This is the first time I have heard people need to pay in order to downgrade a system...

Well since the Windows 7 and 8.1 licences were separate, they're basically charging you to purchase the licence for them. If you have a licence from elsewhere you can still just use that. Linux and Mac don't charge because they don't charge you to upgrade in the first place or sell the OS as a separate licence.

M$ seems trying everything to keep people use win10.
Bad M$!

Well yes, obviously.

 

[MaikuTech]

Looks like MS is trying to seal the deal on price locking windows 10 os.
Before I came here I heard they would do this, early last 2016.
I didn't think they would start out with corporate first but go directly for consumers.
With the way hardware changes so much and so many stupid reactivations and what not.
I also think they are doing this to put a much tighter grip on piracy on their recent OS's.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

This is the first time I have heard people need to pay in order to downgrade a system...

Well since the Windows 7 and 8.1 licences were separate, they're basically charging you to purchase the licence for them. If you have a licence from elsewhere you can still just use that. Linux and Mac don't charge because they don't charge you to upgrade in the first place or sell the OS as a separate licence.

M$ seems trying everything to keep people use win10.
Bad M$!

Well yes, obviously.

heh, Licenses. Thats funny.

MS makes it so easy to pirate their OS. Keys are freely available online that will authenticate against MS's servers. And once you get it to work, you never have to do it on the same hardware again on windows 10.

 

[BSim500]

Worse for who? I have no issues with 10. The article is about business versions not retail/consumer versions of 10. From a business standpoint, makes a lot of sense and no they aren't the only ones who do this.

Depends on the business. We have a family run small business, based from home and have 6x PC's in our house, 1x gaming, 1x general usage, 3x work (mostly web / office) and 1x HTPC. For 30 years it's been DOS/Windows, but now only the gaming rig uses Windows. The transition of the other 5 to Linux was a lot less painful than anticipated. The biggest worry was document format sharing (DOCX vs ODT) but with one-click PDF's that's a non-issue. Amusingly, all three of us find going back to the old Office 2003 "Menu + toolbar" style of LibreOffice a re-upgrade from the God-awful +2007/2010 "ribbon", which even after "getting used to it", still requires extra clicks when constantly swapping between inserting / formatting, etc.

High-end Workstations / large enterprises / specialist software / gamers may still need Windows, but for our small business, stepping off the MS "rat race" treadmill onto full Open Source is literally the best IT decision we've made, and it's almost laughable how "normalized" it's become to falsely believe that for short 1-12 page documents that don't need online collaboration, typical 1-2 page invoices, and monthly billing / accounting spreadsheets for small businesses, there's some mythical "need" to rebuy the same OS over and over (where the primary differences are unwanted UI regressions, a Google-wannabe store filled with junk and more cloud service self-promotion) then be expected to further transition to a "rental" model for the Office software (with same dumb UI regressions) just to maintain relatively static software requirements that peaked between 2003-2010...

"Additionally, OEM suppliers have been notifying customers that Microsoft is extending its downgrade period for another year"

And it's precisely businesses like ours that MS are fully aware of alienating and for which is this obvious damage control. "We'll force you by hook or by crook to use W10, but if you really, really, really don't want to, then we'll "permit" you to use your older OS but may charge you twice for the privilege". Yeah, we're done with those "negative upgrade agreements" and related Windows License Activation remote kill-switches.

 

[Uncle Al]

Might? Sounds a bit like "the sun might come up tomorrow" ......

 

[LeroN]

The computer market is going down and Microsoft decided to kick it completely.
I'm wondering how it will affect companies with the virtualization. All virtual machines are hosted on servers with Xeons. Furthermore all clouds are hosted on Xeons too. So after some time users can see a notice the system is not licensed because Microsoft just revoked the old license and want people to pay for the new one.
As well I don't understand that email from Dell with the good advise to buy new workstation today because tomorrow it will be more expensive. Anyway Microsoft will ask them to pay extra money "tomorrow" even if they bought it "yesterday". Funny funny Microsoft.