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posted by mattie_p on Thursday April 03 2014, @04:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the yes-microsoft-still-has-relevance dept.

A couple of interesting tidbits came out of Build 2014 yesterday. The conference is being streamed for those who cannot attend in person.

Microsoft Planning on $0 Windows for Some Devices

Apparently competition, combined with a desire for Microsoft to invade new market spaces, is applying downward pressure on the price of some forms of Windows licenses. Microsoft announced that Windows would be available at no cost for "Internet of Things" devices as well as for phones and tablets with screens less than 9 inches. Not included: Whether this applies to Windows 8.1 or Windows 8.1 RT, but the inclusion of "phones and tablets" leads me to believe that it will be the RT version.

Start Menu To Return To Windows 8.1

After nearly a year and a half since it was removed in Windows 8, the start menu is finally returning. The previews shown at BUILD show that live tiles (similar to those on Windows Phone) will be displayed side-by-side with the more traditional hierarchy of groups. No word on when this will finally be released to users.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by dotdotdot on Thursday April 03 2014, @09:30PM

    by dotdotdot (858) on Thursday April 03 2014, @09:30PM (#25876)

    ... Google can do it so cheaply since it figured out a way to be subsidized by the advertisers all across the world for everything they do.

    I don't see this as a good thing. I would rather pay for something up front than have it subsidized by selling my private data to advertisers.

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  • (Score: 2) by edIII on Friday April 04 2014, @01:55AM

    by edIII (791) on Friday April 04 2014, @01:55AM (#25981)

    It most certainly is not a good thing.

    The Google paradigm is as damaging or more to end users and businesses. Government may be one thing, but advertisers are pure evil with no pretense of wanting to make things good for the consumer. They already have indexes and risk assessments for practically everything like whether or not I am likely to take my prescriptions on time, am I pregnant, am I gay, am I deadbeat, etc.

    Can we really trust Google to maintain our privacy and agree to not use the individual indexes they create for all of our communications and data? When there is that much money at stake and they literally require it to continue operating?

    I think the general consensus is no. They are just the competition to Microsoft by providing a very disruptive influence to whole scores of industries. They are like a true scourge in that way. Like we needed a new plague.

    As big as a problem that they are though, I cannot truly hate them as much as Microsoft for their behavior. Google can and does make tremendous code contributions to the global communities. They can be a little bit arrogant about how their way is the right way do it, but still they do push out quality product compared to the rest of the proprietary offerings.

    --
    Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.