Call me crazy but since Microsoft feels like they can make changes to the product whenever they like without my consent than it should always be free since it’s an impossible thing to own.

I haven’t bought a copy of Windows since 2011. Bought 7, rode that train to the end, then 10 was a free upgrade. If I have to upgrade my pc for 11, I’ll probably pick out components geared towards a Linux build.

Insert usual “switch to Linux” comment here.

Didn’t they just get sued for being too much of a monopoly?

Wait’ll the absolute shitstorm when they force NPUs…

I don’t mean this as another “Switch to Linux” comment. The fact that I run Linux is irrelevant except in one way that I’ll get to in a bit.

My comment is about HARDWARE.

I bought my current workhorse daily driver in 2016. It never even went through the windows set up, because I immediately switched to an SSD and then formatted the 1tb old spinner as secondary storage.

When I got into video editing a couple of years later, I upped my RAM and it worked just fine.

A couple of years after that, I started 3D modelling with Blender. So I upgraded my video card and increased the size of my SSD and upgraded the power supply.

Since then, its gone through two more video card upgrades, and maxed out the ram the motherboard would accept, and to this day, it still runs Blender, Davinci Resolve, Kdenlive, High End Games, and anything else I throw at it, flawlessly.

Here’s my point. Would the amount of money I spent on upgrades in 8 years be more than the cost of buying new desktops every few years? No. Not a chance.

Of course there are limits. After eight years, my motherboard itself can’t handle anymore upgrades and so eventually I’ll need to buy. But we have reached a point computing-wise, where my specs will probably hold up for a few more years.

Ugh. I’m going to have to figure out Jack audio.