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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."
they need more help than a quarterback.
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.
If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. All that talk about pirates getting free Windows 10 upgrades? Not happening.
Since when it is "good" to reward pirates, and to who (other than pirates!) it sounded "good"?
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
as a former MSFT employee, believe me, this.
What is "the supported lifetime of that device" supposed to mean, in particular as regards to VMs? Being forced to buy a new windows version very two-three years?
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Pirates are just going to have to suck it up and totally go without Windows 10 now no matter how badly they want it.
um....it's been 6 years since windows 7 was released.
Microsoft is a greedy corporation and nobody should use their software, IMHO.
Then you should welcome this policy. Microsoft long had a policy of tolerating illegal copying, especially in the third world, since that helped them become the defacto standard, at expense of truly free software. Now that they are cracking down, it will push people to better alternatives. Greed is good, at least in this case.
um....it's been 6 years since windows 7 was released.
You are part of the problem. You don't care about stability, you just want new, new, new.
if this article is to be believed.
Terry Myerson, Microsoft’s Windows chief: “We are upgrading all qualified PCs, genuine and non-genuine, to Windows 10. . .anywhere in the world. . .
but now
Terry Myerson, Microsoft's executive vice president of operating systems, has clarified the company's plans were not changing for non-genuine users . . .[but despite the earlier statement] our free offer to upgrade to Windows 10 will not apply to Non-Genuine Windows. . .
A little smelly. And just when I thought MS was working it's way back to cool.
Technically (Sir) Henry Morgan was a buccaneer and a privateer, not a pirate. The difference is subtle but exists nonetheless. Pirates didn't receive knighthoods or governerships but rather the short end of a noose. I say this as I look out the window of my Panama apartment across the water to the ruins of "old Panama" which he plundered and burned to the ground...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
And it's still not showing it's age - the question of having a stable situation is important, a lot of changes and failed software from an OS upgrade costs huge amounts of money.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
XP is crap. Its driver model and security model are a total joke. Any program can bring the whole system down, and you will not even know which one it was.
I can't believe people can defend XP, call it "stable" and whatnot. I would rather have a Vista with all its beta-ish stuff than touch XP with a ten foot pole.
Agreed. Admiral Morgan would have been okay to use Windows 10 as long as it is within the terms of his Letter of Marque ;) . As soon as it expires though, his Windows license probably does too.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Alternatives... for doing what.
If you're doing servers or data processing, there you have a plethora of GNU/Linux distributions. You should already be using GNU tools on Windows anyways. Office, entertainment (music/video), web, software development... all of it you can do anywhere.
Mandatory Linux post: I would rather have Linux than touch Microsoft (insert any version here) with a 10 foot pole.
The glass looks feel a bit stale indeed. The problem is that the new metro garbage looks 20 years older!
The Start menu takes up nearly half the screen with large icons, yet truncates the text for those large icons because the text has not been allocated enough room. Really, really poor UI design.
It's configurable. You can:
Seems like they're adding new capabilities in this area every build, too. What's there now surely isn't representative of the final product so it's too early to make final judgments.
I lost control of the Windows Update process, there were no options for me to select besides, ~allow Microsoft to brick my computer at any time~.
This is a technical preview and Microsoft has said that they're really keen on testing their automatic update systems. That's fair, right? It's not like there's currently any benefit to you in sticking with older builds. The option to be prompted before downloading updates has indeed gone missing, but that doesn't mean it isn't coming back -- they're still very much in the middle of migrating all the classic Control Panel options into the new Metro apps.
Also, many news sites have reported that Windows 10 has the ability to prompt you for a to install any given update requiring a reboot. It also analyzes the typical idle periods for your computer and will use that as a default time for scheduling a restart but you can pick any time you like for every update. Surely you'll agree that this is an improvement over being barraged with "Restart your computer" windows every 15 minutes like it does in Windows 7.
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".
Why not offer pirates upgrades to Vista? It would get them on a supported platform and punish them at the same time.
At this moment of time I am replacing a motherboard. Will Windows 7 even boot off it? NO!
Bullshit.
No efi support or I should say limited and no I do not even mean secure boot.
Bullshit.
I am talking usb 3 which Windows 7 doesn't support.
Bullshit.
USB 2 in efi? No support or very limited. Sata in uefi mode? Nope. Exotic. Need 3rd party driver.
Bullshit that doesn't even make sense. What does Windows 7 have to do with it? Talk to your mobo and peripheral manufacturers.
Windows 7 will boot if you turn on csm aka compatibility support module which trashes your boot time.
No tablet support.
Also bullshit.
XP is crap. Its driver model and security model are a total joke.
Please be more specific because the whole NT line shares the same driver model (the most significant changes were actually in win2k with the addition of PnP) and security model. And that includes windows 10... The addition of UAC dialogs instead of runas, isn't a security "model" change so much as a implementation detail. The virtualized HKLM aren't really "security model" changes either and are probably the single largest security change to newer windows that actually makes a difference over running as a restricted user in 2k,xp,2k3.
So, i'm curious what exactly you think is crap about the windows security model and what exactly changed that had a meaningful impact.. And no, simply changing the default user to a restricted one doesn't really count because anyone with 1/2 a brain did the same thing to older windows installs. Maybe the largest resulting change is that crap software now actually works consistently in such an environment without having to implement custom policies for busted applications. ASLR maybe? Because that is application specific and there are 3rd party utilities that provide it for XP. Same thing for driver signature enforcement, its possible to set a GPO to reject unsigned drivers. Something ACL related maybe? Because in microsoft's words "The fundamental structure of access control lists (ACLs) has not changed much for Windows Vista".
You should really read this article http://www.windowsecurity.com/... which is a pretty good introduction to the security features of the NT kernel, so that you can communicate effectively about what you think is wrong with windows security model before you start making blanket statements about it.