Microsoft to start charging monthly fee for Windows 7...

[BG405]

11 years of free security patches for a one-time fee of 30$ or whatever you paid for your license

This is indeed excellent, although not sure where you got yhe $30 figure from. Volume licensing? Retail licences were typically much more than that & I don't think the extended support is being .. ahem .. extended to those customers.

It's going to be those who have a choice between Windows 10 "upgrade" and moving to other platforms such as Linux. There are quite a few people grumbling about Windows 10 these days; interest in Linux is buiding & I'm hopefully doing my bit there.

[gm10]

11 years of free security patches for a one-time fee of 30$ or whatever you paid for your license

This is indeed excellent, although not sure where you got yhe $30 figure from. Volume licensing? Retail licences were typically much more than that & I don't think the extended support is being .. ahem .. extended to those customers.

The percentage of users with full retail licenses is tiny. Most of the licenses are OEM licenses (something like 90% at the time as far as I recall), the next big chunk is volume licenses, some consumers would get upgrade, but full retail licenses for the most part are more of a marketing thing than a reality.

Anyway, I don't think the exact price matters. You also don't expect your car manufacturer to fix your car for free 11 years later.

[BG405]

Anyway, I don't think the exact price matters. You also don't expect your car manufacturer to fix your car for free 11 years later.

I wouldn't expect that for anything computer-related, either, really. And even what I paid for it, when spread over the 5 years or so I used it, would have worked out to only £30 PA, not that bad.

...
I think a 5 or even 3-year TTL is more than adequate for most people as they tend to periodically upgrade anyway & many look forward to new releases, at least in Linux. Still, in the case of Windows, there is a cost to the user when changing to a newer OS, but also Microsoft are opting to divert resources to extend support for (by then) a small minority of Win7 users, which needs to be paid for somehow.

For people who want ongoing support without having to replace your OS every few years, there are always the rolling release distros to choose from. Win10 is one too, and I believe that's going towards a subscription model.

So in conclusion the story is the same: if you want to use MS (or other commercial) software, you will need to keep paying in order to continue using it, whether it's extended support on an obsolete OS or continued updates for the newer ones.

[Portreve]

Well, you also said:

Props for keeping their users secure? Really? I should think that's the very least Microsoft could do.

After 11 years where all they got was a small one-time fee the answer to that is simply no, that's not the very least they can do, they could do much much less and it would still be ok.

Microsoft has always written second-rate OSs, ever since they bought DOS and turned it into MS-DOS. They only became the relevant, powerful, and eventually dominant company they became because of the deal they did with IBM in 1981. It got worse with time, and because of their wanting efforts, they left their customers much more exposed than necessary to viruses and later to malware. Ergo, continuing to push out security updates is the least they could do.

Of course, they also have been force-upgrading their users to Windows 10, and while they're doing that, they are also controlling their users more directly and obviously than ever before. Those who know better and who aren't somehow tied exclusively to Windows have left for Mac OS X/macOS or GNU+Linux. Those who don't know any better, we as a community try our best to educate. Those who just don't care, well... there's really not anything more we or anyone else can do. One can only hope they don't become (or continue to be) unwitting agents of chaos (botnets, DDoS enablers, etc.)

[thx-1138]

........................................................
Given discussions such as this thread, what are your thoughts,
and is there anything here we can specifically leverage to help show the benefits of running GNU+Linux in general,
or LinuxMint in particular?

Privacy. Strongest selling point currently in my point-of-view.
Because that's exactly what everyone-else-in-'tech-business' doesn't respect right now -
what makes the difference to speak off.

No need for tin-foil hat extravaganza or similar 'security theatre' as they call it.
Just a simple, plain, straightforward attitude, without...carnivalesque fanfare or 'shouting', however, still relatively loud enough to be heard:
you own your own data, not someone else's company / organization.

...in regards to LinuxMint in particular - well, obviously not my call to speak of such.
If talking about distributions in a more general manner & the...'year of the Linux desktop', lol...
two things come quickly to mind, which i believe they would help lots of Win7 refugees after it's expiration date to switch more easily:
1) Flatpak adoption. It's been discussed elsewhere around why is that, so i won't bore people around reiterating such here.
Big thumbs up to whoever in the Mint team jumped into his/her gun quickly & thereby helped spreading it's adoption in the Linux world.
2) Wayland being 'ready'. Kinda hard to imagine that many of 'average' Win7 refugees having the patience to fix tearing issues in...2020,
as that was more or less 'solved' back in...Vista.

In a side note, for my relatively 'simple' daily needs, if i could call them this way...
i (almost) couldn't care less for either Flatpak & even more Wayland per se:
if those two automagically 'vanished' tomorrow, my 'routine' experience would be exactly the same.
No problems whatsoever with apt/synaptic & autoconf occasionally,
and rarely any problems as well since quite some time with Xorg for me...

But regardless if i personally choose to use, avoid or even completely purge this or that piece of technology from my system(s),
the more end-users & (more importantly) having more developers / software companies getting properly involved with Linux,
will improve positively my (and everyone else's) experience on the whole.
More people involved, more innovation, more choices by the end of the day...

[rui no onna]

However...there is a leverage point here. Practically everything on a newer cell phone is stored "in the cloud." Which means you really don't need iTunes. That's where the GNU/Linux community needs to hit. It needs to be made clear that your photos and music and contacts and such are already backed up. With that said, there does need to be a better connection/interface with iPhones and Linux. With my Android phone, I just plug it in and Mint 19 finds it and opens a window for me to browse my files. This is a requirement if you want to get iPhone/Windows users away from Microsoft. And that is the target "audience."

This may sound counter-intuitive given my previous comment, but cloud-based computing has nothing to do with this. If you're using an iOS-based device, you absolutely do need iTunes, unless of course the individual in question exclusively listens to streaming content from a non-Apple source, such as Spotify, Pandora, etc. Moreover, it's always been a greater PITA to access an Android OS-based device in Mac OS X ever since Google switched from USB Mass Storage to Media Transfer Protocol, because of course Apple doesn't build MTP support directly into macOS (heretofore also known as Mac OS X) likely for the same reason they won't natively support NTFS read and write, or EXT2/3/4, etc.: they would rather be petty and snub anything that isn't Apple-platform-centric because otherwise they're giving legitimacy to what is in essence a competitor. Hey, Apple: the 1980s called, and they want their platform war mindset back.

I agree with the other poster re: cloud services reducing the need for iTunes. In our household, pretty much the only time we use iTunes is for backup/restore when we upgrade our devices. Even then, that's more by choice than necessity. iCloud Backup would suffice as well (albeit not as quickly).

Most of my MP3s are purchased via Amazon (usually CDs with AutoRip) or Google and I can use the official apps for playback. Older MP3s that I manually ripped from CDs, I've uploaded to Google Play. That said, I wouldn't be surprised to find that most people just use Spotify or Pandora.

Mind, I've seen a number of people opting to forgo PCs altogether in favor of their mobile devices.

[Tomgin5]

I keep getting these amusing scam phone calls.
"Emergency phone call from Microsoft. Your license is expiring and we need your $125 renewal fee abd your computer is infected with malware. Upon receipt of funds we will clean your computer."
I start laughing and say "Bring it on assholes!"
I then hang up.
Have not had Windows in years.

[lsemmens]

I keep getting these amusing scam phone calls.
"Emergency phone call from Microsoft.

Yeah, get them quite regularly, if I have the time, I lead them on for as long as I can. When they finally realise that I am not using Windwoes they "Offer to escalate", which, I am happy to. Always their escalation involves the call dropping out!"

[BG405]

Yeah, get them quite regularly, if I have the time, I lead them on for as long as I can.

I never get them, but if I did, I'd do what you do. reminds me of my Stepdad who would lead on the double glazing sales people, finally ending the call with "Shouldn't your first question have been: 'Do you have double glazing?'."