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posted by cmn32480 on Monday June 22 2015, @01:54PM   Printer-friendly

On Friday [June 19, 2015], Microsoft described a way for anyone to get Windows 10 for free: activated, genuine, and updated forever. We wrote at the time that we expected the company to do a volte-face and back away from this promise. Lo and behold, it has come to pass.

Since Friday, the blog post describing the changes to the Windows Insider preview program has been silently updated. Previously it said that signed up members of the Insider Program running a preview version would "receive the Windows 10 final release build and remain activated." Now it says only that they will "receive the Windows 10 final release build." The activation wording has been removed. The company has also added a "clarifying" sentence: "It's important to note that only people running Genuine Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 can upgrade to Windows 10 as part of the free upgrade offer." This is in contrast to what the company said on Friday, when Microsoft's Gabe Aul confirmed that upgraded preview copies would be Genuine.

So what does this all mean? The main thing it means is that we're not expecting clear communication from Microsoft about licensing any time soon. We don't imagine that there will be any technical difference: we expect that as previously described, Windows 10 installed via the preview will activate and show as genuine. It should be fully functional (no "non-genuine" watermark on the desktop or anything like that), and essentially indistinguishable from any other Windows 10 installation.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by iamjacksusername on Monday June 22 2015, @06:02PM

    by iamjacksusername (1479) on Monday June 22 2015, @06:02PM (#199525)

    It's not quite as bad as IBM but they seem to employ similar methodologies. Microsoft makes it deceptively simple - Oh, just count the clients or devices. Oh, you want SQL? Which edition? Oh, you cant use CALs if you are upgrading that edition under SA; you need to convert them to core licenses. How many cores are you running? Oh, its virtualized. Well, that's a different story. Do you have an EA? Was it grandfathered in from a Select? Which Select did you have? What do I do with Open Business that some guy bought 10 years ago?

    Like I said, this stuff pays the bills.

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