The Real Price of an Operating System Isn’t on the Sticker
Your laptop probably still works fine. It boots, it browses, it runs your spreadsheets. But if it’s a few years old, there’s a decent chance Windows has started nagging you about an upgrade you can’t complete — because a chip called TPM 2.0 either isn’t there or isn’t switched on. That single requirement has turned an abstract debate about operating systems into a very concrete question for millions of people: what, exactly, am I paying for when I pay for Windows, and what am I getting for free when I don’t?