If you’re on Windows 8 or 7, upgrading to Windows 10 should be a no-brainer. It’s free, after all. 

But Microsoft should also offer the same deal to anyone left running Windows XP or Vista (as well as software that can determine if their machines can handle it.) This process will put all the world’s Windows users on the exact same page and the exact same upgrade process.

If Windows 10 is the end of the road for splashy Windows releases, then one of two things has to happen. Microsoft has to slipstream users into some sort of perpetual subscription so the OS can be continuously upgraded for years. If this is the goal, then the company should even allow the pirates a free upgrade and stick them with the consequences.

Or, perhaps, the idea is to indeed end the reign of Windows and drop it all together in a few years and replace it with a wholly new code-base called something else. Let’s call it Killer OS.

The Killer OS, of course, will be able to subsume Windows in some way that users can maintain their legacy applications for at least a decade. This is kind of what happened with Windows as it allowed DOS programs to run in a window. (That DOS window still exists, although few people use it to run DOS programs anymore.) Killer OS should run a virtual Linux, too.

I know that Microsoft is going to move the OS into a subscription model the way it did Office. It’s not going to be able to do this smoothly with Windows 10. You cannot give people free upgrades then suddenly tell them that they have to pay $10 a month or it turns off the OS. The public would revolt.

Something else has to happen, and it has to be more than pulling out an Ultimate Windows 10.

One distinct possibility: A parallel developed code base Killer OS. This would become the “software as a service” product (AKA the rental software, like Office 365). This code will be new, created from the ground up.

In fact it could contain all those fancy features Microsoft promised in Vista and other systems and never delivered. This would include the much needed database file system such as that used by the famous Pick OS (Opens in a new window) from decades ago. All the promised goodies that were never delivered may have been developed then shelved for this long-term strategy. The thinking would be, “This is too good for Windows, let’s save it for the Killer OS.”

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If Microsoft is not doing exactly this, then what is it doing?

Looks like for now, the schlubs in 2018 can still buy a copy of Windows 10—a dead-end OS—or take out a subscription for the Killer OS and get stuck on the treadmill of constantly paying the service fee forever. The lure would be irresistible features. We’ll know what Redmond is up to in a couple of years. But it has to be something like this.

Meanwhile, you may as well upgrade to Windows 10. Just be smart and download a copy of Classic Shell from the gang at classicshell.net. No reason to suffer without it.