Pirates Can Legitimately Upgrade To Windows 10 For Free

[thedarkfreak]

I always thought the idea behind the upgraded version was that it rewarded previous users of Windows and that it could not be installed on a new system (without a previous Windows product key).

Can't speak for W8, but up to at least XP the installer would check for certain files to verify if there was previous version installed, if not it would ask for a Cd Key. W7 upgrade however requires the previous install located on the computer. I use a small drive with XP on it to serve the role and install W7 on my main drive. Once the install finishes I shut down the system and remove the XP install drive.

And yeah, between all the talk of Windows being a service, the "Windows Gaming" statements a couple weeks back and now this I suspect W10 official release is going to be some always on always reporting junk.

I just do a clean install from the upgrade media, and use the registry trick to make it think it did an upgrade install. (Change one registry key, do slmgr /rearm, enter your key(if not done yet), activate successfully).


And for all the people doubting if this is really "free", and wondering why "Microsoft would give up so much money", I'd like to point out that Microsoft really isn't losing that much money on doing this at all.

Microsoft doesn't make that much money from consumers buying Windows upgrades.

The majority of Windows licensing revenue comes from 2 sources:


1) OEMs, selling new computers with new copies of Windows.

2) Other businesses, buying enterprise-level Windows contracts.


Neither of these are affected by Microsoft's decision. New OEM computers are new installs, and need to have licenses purchased. And the free upgrade is only for consumers, not businesses, so the enterprise-level stuff isn't affected.

 

[laggyteabag]

Huh. This certainly makes me wonder why Microsoft is so eager for everyone to upgrade to Windows 10. What is in it for them? I'd understand if they were selling it, but just giving it away for the good karma just isn't Microsoft's usual MO.

Whilst I am interested in upgrading for the sake of DX12, colour me skeptical. I will certainly wait for everybody to dig deep into Win 10 just to see what is going on inside before I dedicate my entire system to it.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Well, that's ominous.

Any thoughts I had of free upgrades are now delayed for about a year. I don't trust free. Free is bad.

It's a general truism that if you are using a product at no cost to you, then you are the product. See also: Facebook.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Never know.... they might just be tired of charging for OSes and such when they could just release it for free, and up the usage rate (which is still higher than any other OS out there free or not) and basically dominate the PC market.
Oh right, big bad corporation, can't trust em and all that jazz. Le sigh. Good for you folks, for me it just means I've more money to spend on hardware when I build new machines.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Obvious digital flypaper tactic is obvious.

It won't change much, because code-crackers are going to look under the hood and remove the unpleasant bits just for the challenge.

What I'd be worried about are the less computer-savvy folks, but that's the root of the issue here.
Microsoft sees Apple making a mint on branding ALONE because of those same tech-illiterate people.

If Win10 is corporate spyware (signs point to this being more likely than ever), I won't use it. Period.

 

[Poetic Nova]

Yeah, this sounds really, really fishy.
I'll happily stick to 7 and 8 on my old and newer laptop respectively.

 

[fenrizz]

Lots of foil hats in here.
There is nothing particularly strange about this at all.
Microsoft doesn't make much money from consumer market but they want to keep the market share nevertheless. They make their money from their enterprise products.
If all of your employees already know how to use Windows and MS Office, then it makes more sense for you to purchase licenses for those rather than retrain your people to use something else.
So chill out. This is not about 'muh warez', nobody cares.

Same reason why Adobe doesn't crack down on Photoshop piracy as hard as they could. Everyone pirates Photoshop for personal use. But this means that everyone knows Photoshop, all tutorials are for Photoshop and if you want to work professionally, you'll be buying Photoshop.

Finally some sense in this thread!

A good business move by MS for sure.