Ok, so why isn't there an option to just buy the thing at its actual cost without the subsidy and without ads? Are they unable to put a $ value on how much the ads will garner them over, say, a 3-year period?

FWIW, I have Linux Mint on all laptops at home, including the ones used by the kids and the elderly, even though I've already paid for the Windows 10 license by virtue of having purchased them default installed.

> Ok, so why isn't there an option to just buy the thing at its actual cost without the subsidy and without ads? Are they unable to put a $ value on how much the ads will garner them over, say, a 3-year period?

That's the classical problem with ad-free subscription models: You remove all the people with cash to spare from your advertising pool, thus decreasing its value. At that point you might as well make the product ad-free for the people not paying as well.

Certainly the costs in the 90s were tied directly to physical distribution and comparatively lesser market demand. Whereas nowadays digital distribution is king and market demand is ubiquitous. I'd consider those factors to be responsible for driving prices down before I'd give a multinational corporation credit for allowing me to use their product (that I paid for) in return for pervasive advertising.

Windows 95 had a suggested retail price of $209.95

https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19950607&slug...

This magazine from 1995 had a CD full of stock images for sale for $18.98

https://the-avocado.org/2018/03/16/lets-read-pc-magazine-jul...

So I don't think the physical distribution was a large percent of the price.

Maybe I attribute too much value to the costs of physical distribution. Either way, my point is that I don't think in-app advertising is the sole driver of the price point we see for Windows today compared to the price point we saw in the 90s.

I find it hard to accept the explanation that in-app advertising is the tradeoff I get when buying a tech product at a given price. Either it's free and it serves me ads, or I pay for it and I get to opt-in to ads if I choose.

It's the same argument for Smart TVs. These companies know they can have their cake and eat it too.

> This magazine from 1995 had a CD full of stock images for sale for $18.98

..."for 100 stunning photos on each CD-ROM. $18.98 each" [1], just in case anyone else wanted to square the comparison in proper context.

[1] https://i0.wp.com/the-avocado.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03...

A music CD has very similar physical distribution costs, and those often sold for less than 20$ if memory serves.

They're = being leaches. Sure Windows 95 is expensive, but so were PCs. If you look at inflation adjusted OS prices, you'll see significant declines that reflect a lot of competition:

- Windows 95 was $210 in 1995: $370.94 in today's dollars.

- Windows XP was $199 in 2002: $297.78 in today's dollars.

- Windows 7 was $159.99 in 2009: $200.75 in today's dollars.

pretty sure I gave like $50 for a license for win95

Let’s be honest though. Windows is supported through OEM licenses. M$ (yeah, I’m dusting this off here, due to the context) isn’t strapped for cash.

scrapped -> strapped

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I’m on mobile. Whatever

How many more copies of windows 10 were sold compared to Windows 95?

How many more engineers work on Windows 10 compared to Windows 95?

I don't think that many. Afaik they closed some teams and replaced them with some automated Tests and stuff. So it's not unthinkable that there were eben less engineers on win10 than on winXP.