Those of us in the industry have seen the operating system as a service model coming since the “free” upgrade to Windows 10. Microsoft isn’t going to “give” anything away. Last month, Microsoft confirmed these suspicions with the release of Managed Desktop, a monthly fee service currently aimed at businesses.
Our hope, however, remained that Microsoft would see the still large percentage of Windows 7 use by both home and business users as a sign that they should extend support past the January 14, 2020 end of life date. Well, we got our wish, but not as expected. Microsoft will continue to support Windows 7 until January 2023, but at a price. Windows 7 “hold-outs” will also fall prey to the service model by paying a monthly fee for security updates which has been fee-free to this point.
While we continue to dislike Windows 10 (even more so with the paid model), many of our business users won’t have a choice. There are business applications that are increasingly becoming a Windows 10 only platform leaving business users with little room for alternatives. Our home users (and some small business users), on the other hand, may see a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel. We are testing Linux and hope to have a demo system available for preview by the end of the year. If you want to read more about the Linux operating system we are testing, check out this Ubuntu 18.04 article. It is a bit technical for a regular user, but the screenshots of the interface are definitely worth a look.
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