content: Even if they went subscription on the OS, you think $10/month? That seems pretty steep to me. Remember that they're making a pile of money on $120/box before Win10 and that's with 3 years of dedicated and, what, 7 years of extended? 10? I can't remember what they use on the accounting schedule, but they record their OS sales very interestingly from an accounting perspective in order to absorb the support cost over the life of each version... $120/3 years is more like $3.33 a month, but I don't see MS doing that. If you don't start with their OS you're unlikely to buy up those Office 365 apps or shop in their store. I expect the whole upgrades-are-free-for-the-first-year has more to do with the support costs of maintaining legacy Windows versions and less to do with the up-front OS cost, and that MS will charge less and less for Windows to keep people on it so that it can send them (annoying!) notifications about opportunities to upgrade their Office or try out SharePoint or what have you.