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Microsoft Offers Pirates Amnesty and Free Windows 10 Upgrades
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft will make Windows 10 available as a free upgrade even to pirated copies of other Windows operating systems in China. Terry Myerson of Microsoft's operating systems unit made the announcement at the WinHEC technology conference in Shenzhen, China, and then told Reuters, "We are upgrading all qualified PCs, genuine and non-genuine, to Windows 10." Microsoft has a history of attempting to tackle massive and rising software piracy rates in Asia and developing countries, and periodically offers low-cost "licence amnesties" to the worst-offending countries, such as Indonesia and Kenya.
Update: 03/18 14:59 GMT by S : Microsoft has clarified that the free upgrade will be offered for unlicensed copies of Windows worldwide, not just in China.
Have hokey windows97 license which has been used very occasionally for years despite "Genuine Advantage" warnings. Since I just upgraded my computer can I swap that for shiny new windows10? I'm not chinese BTW
Is to be overwhelming.
In the USA, the relatively small number of pirates are treated worse than murderers and rapists, but in China, where piracy accounts for 80% of all desktops, there is amnesty. Go figure.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Giving them a new windows version is a bullet-proof method to continuously crash their computers, preventing them from pirating other software.
Don't take it - its a trap! They'll have you locked in and in future you'll pay
Funded by the NSA? After all we don't want them compiling their own OSs with home grown backdoors instead of American ones
Makes me wish I be a Chinee pirate. Besept I don't need Wind O'Tain, and I don't know how to say 'Arrrr' in Chinees. And I hear tell their ships are all junks.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Microsoft: upgrade to our locked down version of an OS no ones tested for compatibility with your existing applications so we can stamp out a tiny fraction of our perceived losses to piracy, and in exchange we will spare you nonexistent prosecution in an overloaded court system that generally doesnt care about your non-crime.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Windows 10 will be "free" the way some websites are free - basic functionality is free but there will be lots of annoying limitations and barriers throughout that encourage users to pay for a premium version or take out a subscription. You only have to look at previous Windows editions to see the sort of things they can gimp to encourage people to pay out more and I bet they go all out this time around.
I would love to upgrade my Windows XP Professional, that I actually paid good money for.
Yeah I know.. I should probably upgrade, but since Windows 7 was more expensive than Windows 8, and it's Windows 7 I wanted, it has been postponed for some time now.
Harald
I have lived in China for quite some time, and just thinking about it, I do not think I have ever seen a Chinese desktop computer running anything but XP. You can relax and stop throwing sales figures at me, Mr. Paid Microsoft Shill/Social Media Consultant who is surely monitoring this thread, I'm not saying it doesn't exist. I'm saying I've never seen it. Oh, wait, once, I remember it was at someone's house and I was surprised to see Vista running. But business/office desktops? All XP. I keep a directory on my USB stick full of programs to make XP less painful.
You have to realize, there are people out there whose first computer ran XP, and who are 30 years old now and it's all they've ever used. How is someone like this going to react to this new version of Windows? Will there be free training courses to go along with the free licenses?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And the NSA gets to pwn you for free.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
They make money from enterprise.
Your copy of Windows serves nothing more than advertisement for them, to remind you that Windows is the computer OS.
I stopped running Microsoft software on "real" hardware when Microsoft decided they could suddenly render my PC next to useless with their "Genuine Advantage" Check. With enough memory, and a virtual machine, I restore in minutes the next time Microsoft decides to s**t all over itself.
All those XP users you still see in market share graphs are essentially pirates. Windows XP SP2 is the most easily pirated Windows OS ever. It isn't just China with huge piracy numbers either. You want Microsoft to write them off and never try to convert them to paying customers? All because you aren't getting "rewarded"?
Nice.
It's better than 7, so I don't have any complaints. It takes 5 minutes to get your start menu back, if that's what's bothering you.
Required reading for internet skeptics
The major change in Windows 8 was the UI but you're saying if I use via third-party software to roll back the UI to Windows 7 then Windows 8 is good. That's like saying the Spanish Inquisition is a party once you factor out all the murders.
How about the first bootup bit where you have to link your fucking admin account to a fucking online account?
You don't have to. You can just create a local account.
Second was that abomination of a start screen.
That's only a bother until you install a Start-menu replacement.
I've found 8.1 not that bad. BitLocker can be used to protect the startup drive without a TPM needed, chkdsk can be run on a drive without needing to be dismounted, Storage Spaces, ReFS, and deduplication are quite nice features. Even running BitLocker on drives without needing a key protector is useful, since a format command zeroes out the master volume keys, making data virtually impossible to retrieve. Plus, Hyper-V is a decent hypervisor (tier 1 hypervisors are relatively rare... especially ones which let you use the computer's main console for daily work.)
Only complaint I have is that 8.1 needs the same backup utility that Windows Server 2012R2 has. Technically both are wbadmin utilities, but the server version is extremely useful.
My pirated WinXP runs on a P3 box with only 256MB of RAM. Can I get a Microsoft upgrade for some hardware that is good enough to run W10. A 64-bit quad core with 16GB of ram and a 4TB disk would be nice.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Ubuntu has been doing that since the beginning - free upgrade from any version to any version! Even for the pirated ones!
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Since it's been confirmed as worldwide, what's the point in anyone at all paying for it?
I have a genuine copy, but instead of paying the upgrade fee I could pirate the same thing and legally update for free. Heck I'll just use VM clones on my valid copy and keep the original around just in case.
What's the catch? Will they lose future upgrade rights have have to buy a full copy later on?
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
If there are extra packages installed that MS is considering using to track how these markets move, distribution models methods, sites used, etc etc.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
To be fair, creating a local account is very discouraged, hidden AND you have no access to the Windows Store. You dont get the full OS without an MS account. Its an ok solution to a shit sandwich.
Good-bye
Way nicer? Windows 7 has precisely the same search in the Start Menu!
What actually happens is that one is just forced to use the Start Screen's search because the Start Screen is otherwise an unusable mess.
NO need for that, the options are all there at install, even with net on. You dont HAVE to make an MS account, but you have to be diligent and look for the local account at creation. They hid the local account creation in GFWL, Win 8 and Win 10. In each instance you have to scroll down to see the options to create a local account. The point is MS is being shitheads about local accounts so its understandable people dont know about them.
Good-bye
Nicer than how in Windows 7 you hit the Windows key and then type the first few letters of your app and hit enter?
> And the NSA gets to pwn you for free.
This is exactly what I'm thinking too.. they seem to be falling over themselves trying to get people to install the new windows - for free, even for all the pirates.
In light of all the NSA abuses, computers are becoming less interesting to me. About all I use them for now is to write software to make money. Beyond that, I don't trust them at all, thanks to the creepy NSA, facebook, and others who want to know too damned much about everyone.
You will have to have over 10 years old computer before Windows 10 starts to show resource problems. The actual problem would probably be that Windows 10 will likely require some CPU instructions to be present that older CPUs do not feature.
So Windows upgrade will be free for everyone, legal and illegal copies... so you just need to download a pirate copy (we all know that everyone already has one) and you'll have a free Windows.
Wrong, (paid or free) alternatives that would have been used instead lost a user. In doing so, it likely reduced interest/community/userbase/funding of that product which prevents it from becoming more of a competitor. Software piracy has a different affect from music, movies etc.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
...and Microsoft gets to pay support people to answer questions from people that never paid for their software. So dumb. Microsoft would be better off to cut these people loose and have them run Macs or Chrome or desktop Android. If someone is willing to run hacked XP or 7 for all this time, they're never going to be paying customers. So why support them? Why have market share if you never get revenue?
because they are not in isolation. They're a part of the internet. When their idiocy gets them infected with someone it spreads to the rest of us. It may not be the best solution but there's reasoning behind it.
Just another second banana
Mod me troll, but upgrading for free will not do it for me, I want to get paid to upgrade to W10... even than will think about it
Not all. There are plenty of businesses out there that are still using windows xp either due to compatibility with older special in house programs or they just don't have the money to upgrade their systems. Unfortunately I fall in to the later. Upgrading 68 systems to windows 7 or above is a huge cost for us and the general consensus from upper management is if it isn't broken don't fix it. so, on average we replace 4-6 systems a year. Figure by 2025 we should finally be off of xp.
Customers get nothing? I think that you will find that customers also get a free upgrade to Windows 10. Everyone is rewarded!
I call shenanigans. You're not going to do anything with a windows 8 machine until you install third party software anyways. What is the issue with installing a third party start menu? If the product is available and does what you want for the price you want (classic shell is free), what's the problem?
Disk IO is better in windows 8 than in 7
Startup times are better
I wouldn't necessarily spend money to upgrade from 7 to 8 on an existing PC, but new PC, I'd just get it with 8.1 to start.
Do you Gentoo!?
1. I've never had that problem in 8, though it did happen with my work computer that is on 7.
2. I guess I'm not using any really old hardware. I was using a 3 year old graphics card though and never had any problems with using non-microsoft drivers.
3. The tiled start screen is dumb but I almost never see it. It was the first thing I saw when I booted the computer for the first time. But then I switched to the desktop view with the windows key and since then it has always gone straight to the desktop after reboots. Now the only time I see it is when I use the OS to search for something, no addons, mods, or cryptic settings required.
4. I've never used RDP on 8 as it's my home computer, but sounds like a plausible complaint. That said I'm not sure how that'd even come up as a problem, are you using RDP to play a video game on a remote server?
In my experience 8 is just as shitty as 7. Which makes sense as 8 is mainly 7 with some extra UI changes which you can mostly avoid anyways.
its the same regs as vista so your box has to be pretty dam old not to be able to run it and probably does not run 7 or 8 anyways.
I've been playing with Windows 10 for a while now, and it is pretty underwhelming in the sense that it is not significantly better than Windows 7. The only thing 10 really brings to the table is a handful of new "features" that don't benefit me (Cortana, etc.).
I won't be bothering to upgrade my Windows machines even for free.
or it just does not have a check to see if your legit or not.
most of there sales come in the form of new pcs anyways. all windows piracy stems from custom rigs and upgrades.
they tried that rought before discounted upgrades didn't do anything.
AND you have no access to the Windows Store.
That's a benefit, not a drawback.
Disk IO is better in windows 8 than in 7
But not enough to matter unless you're doing something special.
Startup times are better
Why do people cite this as if it matters?
Yes and no. I do use some of the apps, like Plex. It would be nice to use those apps without an MS account. Its weird to me that my PC has executables i cant do anything with.
Good-bye
I do not want this deal - my embroidery software requires XP, and the sewing machine will not work with newer software. There is no way I would replace my old "Made in Switzerland" machine, with a modern "made in Korea" one.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Every time Microsoft talks about the free upgrade, there are always those weasel words in there about "qualified" devices. So what devices qualify?
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
Hidden? Not the last time I checked. If you skip the Wi-Fi setup, you CAN'T create the online account, so you create the local account. No access to Windows Store? Boo. Hoo.
Out of curiosity, how or why does it fail? UAC issues or drivers?
"Bottom line do our best to show the great value of our software to these customers and ensure we get paid for it under NO circumstances lose against Linux before ensuring we have used this program actively and in a smart way" ref.
Poke it into a VM. I've got old hardware that doesn't have drivers supported on the host machine, but work fine through the VM. Should you not want to be tied to a particular machine this is an option you may want to look into.
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
I mean this to be a neutral comment; neither pro nor anti Microsoft. Basically, they're going to give away the latest version of Windows for free. But they're also an enormous business, and let's face it, they have bills. Employees to pay, lights to keep on, penguin cages to clean. So, people get on Windows 10, and then maybe send data that helps with advertising, and maybe buy stuff from the Windows store.
There are two other possibilities. The less popular thing to suggest will be that Windows 10 isn't exactly the most private thing. Don't beat me up! I'm not saying it's that way; only that it's within the great wide world of possibility that it's that way. It's also within the great wide world of possibility that we'll all have flying cars next year, so there are degrees of likeliness and truth. Our flying cars next year could be RC and have a max altitude of three inches. It doesn't say much for something to simply be possible, but this isn't a possibility we'll analyze much unless we end up with reason to.
The other possibility is that Windows 10 users will be an enormous testing pool that will help perfect the operating system to get businesses, governments, and other important people using it. Then, money comes from organizational licensing and support. We know that MS has lost some ground in that market with W8, so this could be the plan. It would make sense, wouldn't it? It's a strategy that can make people like them and in the long run keep them on top.
I don't have the answer to this question, but I really want to know it. It's not only a matter of wanting to see Microsoft do well enough to stick around, though that's part of it. They've also played a huge, awesome intrigue card.
The cheater here is Microsoft, not any of us. Microsoft has committed many crimes. It is a convicted monopolist. It deserved to be convicted. And it's totally unapologetic and lacking remorse, Obviously, the punishment wasn't harsh enough. You talk as if poor, poor MS is bleeding to death, when the facts are that it has vast reserves of money and its chief, Bill Gates, has frequently been the wealthiest individual in the world.
Microsoft's cheating is far more egregious than the supposed cheating of all the software pirates in the world.. Remember the Microsoft Tax? Many people, including myself, paid for a copy of Windows we never used or in some cases even received. That's only one of the many, many dirty things MS has done over the years. At the least, MS owes everyone several free copies of Windows.
But that's a bandaid on the real problem, which is the brokenness of the entire business model of selling copies of software. Copyright is dying. MS should understand that. If they don't, it speaks very poorly of their technological understanding and prowess. I suspect they do, and made a deliberate decision to align themselves with the few other copyright extremists in the world, who are mostly in Big Media and Big Pharma, but also includes Monsanto. It was an extremely anti-social move. They used and abused copyright, doing such monstrous things as creating the BSA, and encouraging disgruntled employees to rat out their employers for supposed copyright infringement. Instead of standing against Disney's attempts to steal from the public domain with their lobbying for copyright extension, MS joined them! They loudly announce that they view everyone else in the world, you, me, and all our relatives, friends, and associates, as software pirates. No one should take that. I am NOT going to accept being accused of piracy, when it is the laws that are in the wrong. If copyright is abolished, then there's no more piracy, no more infringement. MS could have been at the forefront of new business models and technology, instead they chose to align with the reactionaries who will not admit that copyrivght needs major reform if not total abolishment.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Windows has always been free for pirates! :P
So with this free upgrade... Will Hyper V still be included on the client side if we have it now or will we have to pay for it? Can't seem to find any answers on that...
I think MS is affraid that windows 10 will be just as much a disaster in sales as windows 8 and they are pushing to prevent it. I think I pass, my illegal copy of windows 7 is doing just fine.
But will it come with a full set of manuals ?
Performance is better over all, which is what matters most. The UI change is what bothers most people, so they can use one of several free tools to replace it. I've adapted and no longer care that things are different.
Though I've found that I use the search feature in windows 7 a lot more than I did prior to my exposure to windows 8. It's surprisingly convenient.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Windows 10 would be "free for the first year," a deliberately ambiguous phrasing that they have yet to clarify.
Ambiguous?
If it was released tomorrow (Mar 19th 2015) then the deadline would be a year after (Mar 19th 2016)
If you install/upgrade-to 10 before the deadline, it is free.
Upon and after the deadline, you will have to buy it in order to install/upgrade-to.
The only thing ambiguous about it is our lack of knowing when Win10 will be released, which we need first before we can "add one to it" and give you a more direct answer.
The major change in Windows 8 was the UI but you're saying if I use via third-party software to roll back the UI to Windows 7 then Windows 8 is good. That's like saying the Spanish Inquisition is a party once you factor out all the murders.
So what you're saying is you haven't installed Firefox or Chrome but instead are using solely the built in Internet Explorer browser? With no antivirus?
Hate to break it to you, but you very likely already have a ton of third party viruses, trojans, keyloggers, and network scanners installed too :P
(90 day evaluation)
.... any pirated version of Windows that is updated to Windows 10 remains nongenuine and unsupported -- so says Microsoft (http://betanews.com/2015/03/18/pirates-can-upgrade-to-windows-10-for-free-but-they-wont-be-supported-by-microsoft/)
I see the announcement was made in china, but it's for everyone.
That's annoying, since I just paid for Windows 7.
I guess I learned my lesson, and I will never pay for another Microsoft product.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Poke it into a VM. I've got old hardware that doesn't have drivers supported on the host machine, but work fine through the VM. Should you not want to be tied to a particular machine this is an option you may want to look into.
I'm not so sure this will work with Windows XP, at least not as "easily" as described in your link. Windows XP likes to BSoD on boot if you restore an image from one set of hardware onto another set of hardware; something to do with XP blindly loading the installed motherboard drivers I think.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
No, they haven't. All the "clarifications" I can find are simply regurgitations of the same ambiguous phrasing.
When you realize that Microsoft have been openly discussing a subscription-based version of Windows, then the phrase, "Free for the first year," takes on an entirely different meaning, now doesn't it? Microsoft has not clarified this, even to discredit it.
And even if MS isn't planning on a subscription-based flavor of Windows, they still have been abundantly less than clear exactly which version of Windows 10 you'll be receiving for free. Will it be a kind-for-kind trade (Home version for Home version, "Pro" version for "Pro" version, etc.), or will everyone get the lowest tier SKU available, probably with Bing plastered everywhere?
It would be nice if I were wrong about this. But Microsoft's history demands that I be very suspicious of Gateses bearing gifts.
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
While this was quite common, it was not 100% of the time. If you go from IDE to SATA it typically works. And if it does not simply remove the reg keys for the IDE controller. https://www.raymond.cc/blog/mo... shows one how both before moving the hard drive, and after.
I had hardware drivers and softwares that don't work well in updated Windows XP Pro SP3 VMs. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Do we know yet exactly what we are getting with win 10?
I mean, I don't think I'm going to trade in my win-whatever if it means I get a shiny new os....that I have to pay monthly (or whatever) or they remotely kill it.
-Styopa
Would be great if we can also force them into giving downgrades like they had to with Vista. If I can get a free Windows 10 and downgrade it to Windows 7 my OS needs (from Microsoft) will be met permanently.
It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.
I think we've all been bitten by the upgrade bug. I've become conservative with updates to setups that work. Sierra was extremely effective at branding "save early, save often" into my impressionable formative brain. While the times have changed I've taken this to heart and make liberal use of snapshots when doing anything in a VM. I'm not certain which platform you're using but most of them have roughly similar features. Not to say I don't cowboy things from time to time :)
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
Nonetheless it sounds like a worthy experiment :) There are passionate people who are far more experienced I who've graciously shared their wisdom and experiences, all it takes is asking the right questions. If it's a single piece of hardware with drivers on hand, why not provision a fresh image and just install the drivers again? No sense in making a production out of it unnecessarily, unless that's your cup of tea!
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
So what, it's down to a game of name the feature and you get to decide how valid it is for an argument? You're talking like it's the exact same OS under the UI, it's not and there are considerable improvements beyond just Disk IO including management interfaces, tablet integration, power management, encryption, and then add on it the user facing features like the improved file copy interaction, more intelligent handling of wifi and other networks, better bluetooth, native support for USB3.0, and I'm bored.
You can read the rest on any review site. Suffice to say that Windows 8.1 with classic shell is a hell of an improvement over Windows 7.
That's why Microsoft released Sysprep. Run that, then make your image. When you boot the image, it will detect all hardware and not assume it is running on the machine the image was taken from. This works in Windows 2000, XP, & Vista, at least.
Does your anti-spam HOSTS solution block inline spam like every single one of your posts? Your competitors do... strange how you never mention that when you vomit your incessant nonsense across Slashdot.
Posting this after the story update that says the Microsoft offer is WORLDWIDE and not just made for China:
The question I find interesting is whether MS will allow modded copies to circulate, similar to the way say Google allows Cyanogenmod to come out with their own Android distro. I can't see how MS can prevent modded copies. Maybe MS will build a "time-bomb" into Win 10 that forces you to upgrade to a paying version of Win 10+. But I'm sure since it's a consumer oriented OS there are enough holes in it that would allow the OS to run virtually forever or until the last Intel-based machine comes out of the factory floor.
The way I see it, this "offer" is going to be permanent. There's no turning or shall we say cutting back on the free beer. Whether this is a good thing or not is another story altogether. Go ahead, enjoy your freeware (spyware?).
...if your privacy is worth nothing.
And yes, I have escaped from the MS ball and chain. Hasta la Vista!
This seems self serving.
Since the set of Mockrosoft products serve as host to the largest
collection of hacked robot farms out there this is interesting. Hardening
their server and other products seems too hard for MS. It seems to me that this may
prove to be the single most cost effective strategy there is to reduce
the size of distributed attack farms. That alone would make their server
products measurably better to customers. It would allow sites
to maintain desirable uptime and availability numbers.
It also reduces the impact on software engineering in Redmond because
this makes is easier to slowly walk away from previous Windowz versions.
Without knowing the truth, I would assert their cash flow is not dominated by selling updates, it is
Office and new hardware tax.
It may also enable improved markets for new Office products for Asian languages.
Back porting and compatibility in Office 2xxx-new is baggage that might
be left behind.
It is a big bet that Win-10 will run well enough on the older hardware
and a big bet on the quality of the release.
It could pay off...
It could just make Linux+GNU a better choice.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
And your hosts solution can't block the spam you flood on Slashdot. Go see a doctor - this is getting even more pathetic than anyone is comfortable with. Schizophrenia is no joke.
Are you kidding me?