Re: A final throw of the dice before
It's highly unlikely that they will go to any sort of direct subscription-only model with Windows 10, at least not for people that already have it. Changing the terms of a sale after the deal has been done almost certainly falls afoul of a law or two. If you sell something to someone, even for free, you can't just turn up a few months or years later and start asking them to pay more money for it. So I say when we come back in a year as you suggest, we will find that nobody will be forced to pay a subscription to use Windows 10 as we know it.
Now that's not to say they won't introduce a paid tier. They might bundle some of the existing subscription services; subscribe to Windows 10 Plus, get Office 365 lite, some OneDrive storage, Groove Music maybe. They could start introducing new features that you only get if you subscribe. Who knows.
And it's also not to say that they couldn't go subscription-only for new sales; as many have suggested, maybe you'll buy a PC with one year free Windows, after which you'll have to start paying or lose access to x, y, z features. However I find it unlikely that Windows would simply stop working if you didn't subscribe after the free period, that would just be too unpalatable; I'd certainly never buy a PC on those terms. Likely you would lose access to your cloud features that the subscription included, and be left with the basic OS, much like the Windows 10 of today.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
