This was bound to happen.
According to a new report from Taiwanese publication United Daily News (UDC,) Microsoft is raising the cost of Windows license fees for hardware makers by a much higher amount than normal. According to the report, certain OEMs are seeing licensing price hikes of between 7% and 10%.
↫ Zac Bowden at Windows Central
Like every other tech company diving head-first into “AI”, Microsoft is losing money on its gamble head-over-fist, with no profitability in sight. Since admitting betting the company on “AI” was a mistake is out of the question, Microsoft has to extract the money from somewhere else to make up for it. The cost of Windows licenses for OEMs is an obvious lever to pull, as OEMs really have nowhere else to turn to (yes, desktop Linux is making gains, but not in any meaningful numbers), so they’ll take hit and pass the cost on to consumers.
The end result will be that prices for laptops will increase even more than they already have thanks to the “AI”-induced RAM and component crisis, creating a double-whammy of price increases caused by “AI”, either directly or indirectly. It’s just another category of products we can add to the cost of living crisis that’s causing untold harm and damage to hardworking people all over the world.
The price of incompetence is rarely paid for by the incompetent.
I am waiting for the lawsuits, as it now will probably make Microsoft-branded computers potentially cheaper than Lenovos and Dells. Microsoft doesn’t have a large share of the market as far as I know, but the 7-10% increase may turn into a 1-2% more expensive computer which may make a sensible difference depending on system price range.
And people will say “but Apple has been like that for 40+ years”.
And I will be hoping someone in the EU machinery smells blood in the water.
would be lovely to see OEMs going more into Linux given the pricing changes and more solid Linux offering… could it be Microslop shooting itself in the foot in the long-term?
Nope, most people don’t want Desktop Linux in the same way they don’t want an L-shaped condom. There are two major app ecosystems in the desktop space, MacOS and Windows, and Desktop Linux is only partially compatible with one of them.
10% of the license price (not the computer price) is peanuts, it doesn’t justify OEMs funding a massive compatibility effort akin to Proton (but for non-game apps).
I hope they can use some of that money to solve the built-in Weather app wasteing more than 1 GB of RAM
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Windows-11-s-built-in-Weather-app-wastes-more-than-1-GB-of-RAM.1364205.0.html