srod wrote:the.weavster wrote:I have heard a rumour the next version of Windows will be Microsofts last desktop OS.
They make a dumper truck load of $$$ every minute from OEM sales of Windows so I would find it hard to believe that they would sink this cash cow! Of course they could plan to make this up by selling server space for these VM's etc. but this would still be losing all the $$$ from the home user market etc.
maybe, but some how I think they have this all figured out. Think about it though for a second, if all computers are basically dumb terminals then the cost of systems is going to drop greatly because you wont need things like hard drives or lots of memory or even DVD/CD players. The cheaper systems will mean more people are able to aford them (if we get out of this economic mess we are in

), the more people that buy them the more people that will access the cloud. You might even see deals like we see now for computers with features like bigger hard drives, instead you might see deals like "The fastest system on the market today, for an introductory monthly fee of $19.99 for access to the the premier MS operating system and your favorite MS games and applications"
I'm sure the corporations will figure out the money angle. Corporations don't do anything unless they can make money at it.
sad really, very sad. Its sad because we as a computer community allow it to happen by the actions we take or don't take like accepting DRM as an anti-piracy measure when it isn't, allowing companies thru the vote-via-dollar to make console only titles and then buying them and buying consoles and believing the sales hype that it was the way to go, by not standing up and saying "we will not buy the crap that you put out" or "we demand PC based games and software, not just consoles, and demand unfettered access to the content we purchase to be free to use it legitimately and legally when we want without restrictions".. to software companies, by just rolling over and accepting what ever came along, by not doing research on our own and realizing things for what they really are instead of believing what we read on the 'net in some forum somewhere that could really care less and thinking numbers of opinions in those forums meant it was really fact, when we allowed companies to dictate to the consumer what demand will be instead of the consumer dictating demand as its supposed to be in a free market, and a bunch of other ways. Yep, we allow it to happen when we had the control all along thru the control over spending our money. As long as someone will pay for it the companies will keep putting it out and pushing it in such a way to keep you from knowing whats really going on. 'Caveat emptor' is Latin for "Let the buyer beware", so even those in the dim past without knowing what the future would be warned us even then, and here we are in the present with it actually happening and we still fail to see whats going on.