DrJBHL

It's not really possible for an OS to not install.  You can, today, install windows 7 on a skylake system.  For this to change, Microsoft would have needed to plan ahead and purposefully design the operating system with future knowledge of Intel's architecture ten years later, to break and no longer work with it after a while.

You may not be able to get everything working, but the only way they can make the stuff not work on things it currently does, is by actively breaking it.  To do so would only be possible via updates, and would result in an immediate class action lawsuit and probable criminal prosecution for sabotaging their customers intentionally.  At best, the people running the company would soon be out of a job in retaliation for losing hundreds of millions.

Unless they truly have lost all sense of perspective and think they can literally get away with murder, in which case fear for their jobs will send the government cracking down on them so hard they'll think the IE insanity was a wet dream, they wont be doing this sort of thing and they're just trying to scare up some business by making it sound like things will stop working.

In my case, verbose repartee is how I keep my hands from degrading to the point where I can't type at all.  Short and succinct isn't much good for practice.

Edit: Type ftw, really haven't been typing enough the last several months.  It's gone completely to shit!

JMHO, not sure how recent that stats are but 10 has about a 12% market share while 7 is still above 50%. I'm thinking that even with the "free" upgrade that they may be disappointed with the results. They are now turning to threats and innuendo to force others to switch.

Like I said, just my humble opinion.

That's exactly it!  MS is not happy with the poor uptake to Win 10.  Despite its claims that Win 10 is on so many millions of machines, many of those copies were foisted on purchasers of new machines.... they did NOT install it by choice.  Another large number of copies is on OEM machines still sitting on store shelves around the world.... and the rest are on machines of those who sucked up the 'free' upgrade.  Had it a been pay for OS, I doubt very much the abomination would be on half as many of those PCs... if that.

As for the threats; intimidation; persistent upgrade attempts; innuendo and badly worded update/patch information, MS should be hauled over the coals by whatever Senate committee deals with that sort of thing.  Smaller companies would not get away with it, and neither should MS.  If I reject Win 10, not once but several times, MS should get the message and cease to pester me with related updates, patches and so-called important fixes.  Sadly it doesn't, with altered/reworded Win 10 related updates turning up again and again.

Had I not set my updates to manual installations, the bastards would have snuck it through already... and geez, then I'd have been mightily pissed and told MS where to shove all its products.

Here's a conspiracy for you...Cortana is just away to get people to use Bing. 

Priceless.

And that's the scenario suggested in the article I read.....  supposedly at the behest of MS to make modern hardware and 'modern' software more compatible, to eliminate older OSes for security reasons.

As to whether they artificially restrict their own markets, well I suppose that depends on how successful MS is in 'persuading' Win 7 holdouts to 'downgrade' to 10.  If the majority of Win 7 users are 'forced' to use Win 10 then there would be little to no real impact on sales.

Now this does surprise me... kona actually loving a new OS.  Well there's a turn out for the books. 

not trying to be a putz here but I didn't think they were selling it but giving it away, sales = $0.00?

Nope!  None! 

And don't say I need my head read.  My last shrink is now himself an inmate at my last institution.  Yeah, I say "last" because I was deemed fit to be discharged.

I think it was more a case of wresting control of the asylum back from the lunatic. 

What?  My laptop wasn't connected to the internet and worked just fine, not sure why you think it would have to be connected all the time.

Actually, that should be frightening.  How does a processor "support" an OS?  By putting an intentional hook in the firmware that only the OS can use, and refusing to boot with an OS that doesn't grok the hook. 

Intel and MS have been warning us for years that they will install a back door at the hardware level that allows primarily IP owners to vet an installation and the NSA or the equivalent to get into your system. All with the best intentions, of course.

Piracy aside, Hillary will seem prescient once "the gubbmint and industry too"* widely adopt the new kluge.  Even the Iranians ain't stupid.

* Gratuitous Frank Zappa rip.

They could dump it entirely and stick to other platforms, but that's about it.  Even DX11 is horribly out of date for modern processing architecture.  It simply doesn't work for anything with unpredictable loading requirements.  Things like shooters and RPG's could limp along for quite a while without noticing it, but the mechanical limitations crippled strategy games years ago.