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Microsoft Confirms It Won't Offer Free Windows 10 Upgrades To Pirates
An anonymous reader writes: If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. All that talk about pirates getting free Windows 10 upgrades? Not happening. For genuine users, the free upgrade to Windows 10 means receiving "ongoing Windows innovation and security updates for free, for the supported lifetime of that device." Terry Myerson, Microsoft's executive vice president of operating systems, has clarified the company's plans were not changing for non-genuine users: "Microsoft and our OEM partners know that many consumers are unwitting victims of piracy, and with Windows 10, we would like all of our customers to move forward with us together. While our free offer to upgrade to Windows 10 will not apply to Non-Genuine Windows devices, and as we've always done, we will continue to offer Windows 10 to customers running devices in a Non-Genuine state."
Add to it: Who needs Windows 10? It's way too early after the release of the decently working Windows 7.
Too frequent OS updates is just causing trouble for users.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
That was a phrase that also stood out to me. Why does Microsoft get to determine the lifetime of *MY* hardware? Don't they realize that I can increase the useful lifetime of my PC by upgrading the CPU? (in some cases)
The glass looks feel a bit stale indeed. The problem is that the new metro garbage looks 20 years older!
Except that unauthorized software copying costs the source company nothing - unlike the Mercedes factory that faces considerable per-unit costs. Meanwhile in the *specific case* of OS, office, and a few other genres of software, vendor lock-in is achieved largely via network effects. Get enough people using illegitimate software on their personal PCs, and companies will tend to use the same thing. And *they* run the risk of license audits, so will tend to buy legal software. If most individuals were acclimated to using Libre Office, do you really think companies would still be inclined to pay the MS Office tax and have to keep track of licenses, etc.?
For non-infrastructure software of course the argument evaporates - Valve gets no benefit from people pirating Half Life.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
That's your choice. Nothing wrong with it. You should use the tool that works best for you or that you like the best. Linux is that tool for a few people. For many more people it is OSX, and for a huge number it is Windows. You aren't wrong just because your tool happens to be niche.
Agreed and you can bet your behind that many of the small shops like mine will avoid it for the first year because of the major PITA from false positives. Certain OEMs (cough "Lenovo" cough) seem to just be hated by MSFT and are a big enough hassle to get past WGA with their own damned Windows 7 key, to have to jump through the WGA hoops AGAIN just to upgrade the thing? Fuck off MSFT, Win 7 gets patches until 2020 maybe by then you'll get your head out of your ass.
What is fricking sad is for the first year of the Win 7 release they were killing piracy dead, with $50 for Home and $100 for a triple pack the amount of pirate systems in my area was dropping like a stone and as I said then if they would have offered Win 7 Starter for $25 for older systems? They would have wiped it out. Now it looks like they aren't even offering the cheap upgrades for the first year...anybody wanna bet my local Craigslist is gonna be filled with whatever the top Win 10 SKU is because they got a pre hacked off of TPB?
Dear MSFT....the pirates already have Windows 7...you know as well as I do that you CANNOT BLOCK IT because they are using the OEM SKUs which means you'd wipe out tens of thousands of OEM Windows 7 installs and the false positives would be a bad publicity nightmare,mmmkay? Your goal should be to MAKE THE PIRATES RUN LEGIT because your numbers for Windows 8/8.1? Suck monkey nuts, you cannot afford another fail, right? As Gabe Newell said "piracy is a service problem" and with Windows 7 firmly in their hands you have NO stick to swing at them, ALL you have is the carrot...WTF are ya doing man? You should be offering $25 copies of Win 10 Home and $50 triple packs to bring them into the fold! You're shooting yourself in the face all over again, just like when you refused to listen to us beta testers that pointed out Windows 8/8.1 (which is also in the hands of the pirates, they just don't like it as much as Win 7) was like running Windows 2.0 redesigned by hipsters, are ya TRYING to reach a trifecta of fail?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Oh, you're one of those people who don't know the difference between "your" and "you're".