Windows 7 Activation key

[Studio117]

davepoth said:

Motorrad said:

I read that the pre-release will upgrade unregistered copies of Win 7 (no idea about 8) to Win 10 which will then be fully supported and legitimate.

Having undergone the upgrade process from win 7X64 to it's Win 10 beta I suspect the legitimacy of your 7 distro is the least of Microsoft's concerns. This is about keeping market credibility and viability IMO.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-10/abou...

Straight from the horse's mouth as it were - the free upgrade offer is in the middle of the page.

Microsoft are moving to an incremental upgrade model, which makes sense really as the monolithic release cycle basically bet the farm on each release.

"People" (non nerds) don't buy Windows - it's bundled with the PC and usually the only time they get a new version is when they buy a new PC. So the market for people actually buying windows is small, and not really that profitable any more in comparison to other business areas. The money is in making sure that people are running Windows at home and at work so they can lock them into Office/Exchange/Sharepoint/Azure on a monthly contract, and the best way of doing that is giving it away or selling it for not a lot of money.

It's a massive change for Microsoft, and a very ballsy move - but I think it's a good thing to do for them and the rest of the world.

They must have considered corporate environments with the new OS, since that is still a big part of their core business.

I wonder what upgrade path is on offer once 7 is obsolete and hardware obsolescence becomes more frequent.

[jhfozzy]

Sheepshanks said:

MissChief said:

Where have they said that windows 7 users will get a free upgrade to a fully activated consumer version of windows 10, for free? I haven't read it anywhere?

Here http://www.pcworld.com/article/2873214/windows-10-... for example - and that says it doesn't matter if your existing version is pirated.

Uh oh.