350°

Should Microsoft give Windows 7 away for free?

Everyone has recognized that Windows 7 is "Vista done right." So should Microsoft just give the OS away for free?

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blogs.zdnet.com
outlawlife5984d ago

interesting idea, it will never happen but is is a good read

windows 7 is very nice, ill give credit where it is due, it is a very nice OS still has some issues but i love it

when i build a new pc i'll probably win widnows 7 if i can find the heart to actually finally leave XP pro after all of these years

Maddens Raiders5983d ago

anything away for free, it should be the 360.

But continue to charge for the online service of course. lol

T3L3PROOF5983d ago

Knowing how greedy microsoft is they will probably make you pay a s**t load.

Dark_Vendetta5983d ago

Sounds really smart. Investing a few billions in an OS and giving it for free to the costumers. Why haven't I had this idea earlier?

thats_just_prime5983d ago

They should give it to vista users for free if not they should sell it to them for 50 dollars

blind-reaper5983d ago

or just call it Vista Service Pack SP#... but it wont happen

ThanatosDMC5983d ago

i actually thought Windows 7 was just gonna be an update for vista. Guess, i was wrong.

player9115983d ago

I heard something about MS giving away Windows 7 to Vista owners... or a heavily discounted upgrade rate.

Windows 7 is in beta.

The first Vista beta resembled XP. The first Win7 beta resembles Vista. Just because the first beta of Windows 7 resembles Vista doesn't mean it should be deemed as Vista SP2.

By the time Win7 is released it will be a pretty heavy upgrade. Even in beta... a lot of the apps are already heavily updated. Having been using Win7 for a couple months, it is very addicting. I can rest assured that upgrading was a sure win in my book.

+ Show (4) more repliesLast reply 5983d ago
butbutbuttehcell5983d ago

The probability of this is zero

Huh5983d ago

how were you able to type f r 3 3 and microsoft in the same sentence it doesnt work for me

caffman5983d ago

i've had plenty of free stuff from microsoft.

Bubble Buddy5983d ago

huh: Microsoft gives free RRoD's. All my friends including my brother got one all for FREE $0.

*runs and hides*

Drekken5983d ago

Caffman, do tell. I would love to get a nice cup of hot chocolate and listen to your fairy tale around a camp fire with the group.

FantasyStar5983d ago (Edited 5983d ago )

MPU, that's all you need to know.

caffman5983d ago

about 22 XBLA games (over various times you get free games for various reasons. I got 10 because I just filled a form in!)
so many themes and gamerpics I can't even begin to count (if you just look at whats new out you can find them easily)
5 HD-DVDs (Before the cries of DEAD FORMAT!!!!!! I know but a HD movie is a HD movie and why pay £20 for serenity when I got it for free. Once again all I had to do was send in a receipt)
Now what have I got from Sony? Nothing. Not a sausage. My mate got a free blu-ray off them so I know they do give stuff out but there you go

+ Show (2) more repliesLast reply 5983d ago
Leio5983d ago

If its not better than XP then i´ll get it for free ;)

outlawlife5983d ago

piracy shouldn't be advocated under any circumstance

Foxgod5983d ago

Try the beta, its way better then xp, i have xp and w7 dual boot, everytime i switch back to xp i have to let my eyes get used to the blurry mess.

Windows7 is crisp and clean, and its responsive time is way better then xp.

SaiyanFury5983d ago

I have the W7 beta but I'm waiting on the arrival of a new HDD before I can install it. I've used W7 on my brother in law's PC that I installed it on and I was duly impressed. Faster response time than XP and once I got used to the navigation, which took all of 5 minutes, I loved it. I'm still curious how games will perform on Windows 7.

killzone2flop5983d ago

Let me take a wild guess who's asking it for free........Sony droids (Cheap B*stards).

outlawlife5983d ago

this really has nothing to do with sony

it is people who purchased vista which upon the release of windows 7 will probably be dropped

LeonSKennedy4Life5983d ago

Yeah...because PS3's are cheap.

Grow up.

psnSkareFace5983d ago

microsoft do something for free thats funny, thats so funny i cant control myself

outlawlife5983d ago

it wont happen but if they did do it they would get all kinds of positive pr rubs

Theoneneo815983d ago

What the heck does ps3 have to do with windows 7 id say 90 percent of the ps3 users are pc users

outlawlife5983d ago

absolutely nothing, but trying to prove ps3 supremacy means anything involving microsoft means we must inject something into it about a game console

CyberSentinel5983d ago (Edited 5983d ago )

How about giving away all your Ziff davis magazines for free?

The same information can be googled and/or found on competing websites, (Cnet-Gamespot) including your own. (ZDnet-PCmag-EGM)
So why should anyone subscribe/pay for your magazines?

Of course that didn't stop you from expecting people to pay for it.

Blind Hypocritical Lemmings, Practice Before You Preach.

+ Show (4) more repliesLast reply 5983d ago
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60°

Bard's Tale IV is no longer compatible with Windows 7 apparently

Windows 7 official support ended recently and inXile Entertainment are now pushing Bard's Tale IV players to install Windows 10 apparently. Considering it was originally playable in Windows 7, players are not liking the minimum system requirements change.

90°

Microsoft has made it possible to port Nvidia’s DX12 ray tracing to Windows 7

Building on the success of porting WoW's DX12 version to Windows 7, Microsoft has published help for other DX12 devs, which includes a runtime that supports all the features of Windows 10 October Update... including DirectX Raytracing.

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pcgamesn.com
160°

Microsoft Ports DirectX 12 to Windows 7 - Boosts World of Warcraft's Performance in Latest Update

That's right, DirectX 12 has come to Windows 7

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overclock3d.net
bmf73642291d ago

Strange they made this update with DX12 when Windows 7 is going to be EOL next year

rainslacker2290d ago

I guess when they said they needed the new kernel for DX12 that was just them spewing BS like they always do. I knew this to be true, because Win10's kernel is essentially Win7's kernel. Same BS they've spewed for so many DX updates locked behind new versions of windows, which held back PC gaming for so long, because devs wouldn't use the new API's, and even skipped generations of the API because MS didn't sell enough of the new OS's to make it worthwhile for the dev.

it is a surprise though, because I thought they were going to abandon older versions of windows because Win10 was their way forward, and Win7 doesn't have the native access to Live like they have now.

King_Noctis2291d ago

World of warcraft? Does this game need a boosting at this point?

Stanjara2291d ago

I still don't get it if dx12 is better for performance or not.

Sgt_Slaughter2291d ago

I guess it all depends on the developer and how they optimize it.

maybelovehate2291d ago

DX12 allows much better optimization. But that is of course up to the developer to take advantage of.

CaptainCook2291d ago

Since DirectX12 was built around Windows 10, it will always offer superior performance compared to Windows 7

rainslacker2290d ago (Edited 2290d ago )

If the dev takes advantage of it then yes. Even if you don't have a DX12 card, there are some things with the rendering pipeline which are better than previous versions. The low level stuff can be hit or miss with older cards, but luckily it can adapt when you do the actual application runtime.

@Captain

DX is not built around Win10. The graphics API, which is the most important, is not actually tied to the kernel, and Win10 uses essentially the same kernel as Win7. MS saying it's a kernel related issue was them just once again trying to get gamers to upgrade to new versions of windows, just like they have so many other times in the past. That lie that MS kept spewing has held back console gaming for years, because devs often wouldn't support new versions of DX because people weren't upgrading their OS's.

Win10 does have other advantages in terms of game performance, but it has nothing to do with how the API and kernel are connected.

Stanjara2290d ago

Bravo...this is absolutely the right answer!

maybelovehate2290d ago

Yeah, it would make more sense to say that Windows 10 was built around DX12.

rainslacker2290d ago (Edited 2290d ago )

@Maybe

No, it wouldn't.

The windows Kernel, and DirectX have no direct relationship to one another. One is a software API that runs in windows, and is not dependent on it outside the interpreter that handles the instructions that get carried out between the API and the hardware. Windows itself does not in any way need DirectX, nor does the base rendering process have any connection to how Windows renders the OS, or anything in it. Developers can enable that in their programs, but it isn't required. It is even possible to uninstall DirectX if one knows the process to do so. I have done so on many occasions in my work due to beta versions having issues which didn't allow me to do my work, so I had to reinstall other versions.

Win10 is a modified version of Win7. A few core commands have changed, but the meat of the kernel is still the same. There may be dependencies for DX built into Windows which are based on the kernel, but dependencies can be implemented in older versions to allow it to work. MS just chose not to do so, because they want to push new versions of windows.

+ Show (1) more replyLast reply 2290d ago
maybelovehate2291d ago

Seems strange to port it to Windows 7 at the same time they started to notify customers it has reached its end of life lol

eddvdm2290d ago

Woah, that's great actually! I can finally throw my Win 10 in the trash and go back to an OS that doesn't f*** up my games performance at each update.