Microsoft is reviewing the licensing plans of Windows. Soon Windows 11 and Windows 10 will no longer be activated with the Product Keys of Windows 7 and 8.1: the change, according to reports, should only concern users who install the next ones feature update of the two operating systems and not the versions released to date. There are three many new features on the horizon, Windows 11 could get rich with a model in subscriptionon the basis of what has already been done with Office and Microsoft 365.
Windows 11 is increasingly looking to the cloud
Microsoft recently presented the possibility, for small and large companies, of run Windows on the cloud. With Windows 365 Cloud PC, the Microsoft operating system becomes entirely usable remotely, using an instance installed and running on the Azure platform. In fact, therefore, the user’s device can become a thin-client that is, a very simple machine from the point of view of hardware equipment because all the computational power is moved to the cloud.
With the launch of Moment 4, Windows 11 it even offers the ability to load Windows 365 Cloud PC instances at system startup (the feature is called Windows 365 Boot) and to switch, at the user’s request, from the operating system running in the cloud to the one installed on the machine in use (Windows 365 Switch).
Windows 11 subscription: it could soon become a reality
Who manages the Windows licenses knows well slmgr.vbsuno script VBScript integrated into all versions of the operating system that can be used to activate, install, uninstall and interact with product keys. It can also be used to check if a Windows license is valid or to convert one edition of Windows to another.
The channel Canary of Windows contains the preview versions most recent, reserved for users of the Microsoft operating system enrolled in the program Windows Insider who always want to try the latest what’s new in Windows 11 and, later, those integrated into future releases of the operating system.
In the latest versions Canary of Windows 11, which offer valuable clues about the direction in which Microsoft is looking, a file has been spotted slmgr.ini which contains information about editions previously non-existent, not even present in the Windows 11 23H2 package.
As reported on this page, a direct comparison between the contents of the files slmgr.ini highlights explicit references to a new Windows 11 subscription: the file, in fact, hosts information on the subscription edition, the type of subscription subscribed and its status.
What are the differences between the subscription edition and the retail ones
At the moment it is not known what Microsoft has in store for users of Windows 11, and in the future of Windows 12 (or whatever the future operating system of the Redmond company will be called), who will sign up for a subscription.
What is certain is that today it is possible to purchase, even outside Microsoft channels, Windows 11 licenses at a heavily discounted price. Among the best Windows offers it is always good to opt for those reliable resellers who offer a guarantee on the origin of the activation codes and who do not limit themselves to marketing Product Keys but put their signature on the “genuineness” of each license. In fact, the Product Keys are one thing, the licenses are another: in fact, it is the latter that give full credit right to the user to use the software.
Today, for example, it is possible purchase a license of Windows 10 for less than 40 euros and switch to Windows 11 for free. The license thus obtained gives the right to use Windows 11 indefinitely.
Given such low “one-off” costs, what more can asubscription edition of Windows 11? Microsoft will obviously reveal it, even if for the moment it is possible to move in the field of hypotheses. Certainly, a Windows 11 subscription should focus on services cloud: it could therefore offer abundant OneDrive space, focus on artificial intelligence solutions (therefore on integration with Microsoft Copilot), make tools such as Windows 365 Cloud PC available “by default”. We will see.
