Never has MS changed RTM code before public release and they won't do it now either. They may very well, however, have a bunch of updates that will self install as soon as you fire it up. With W10 more than any other OS they have ever released I believe this will happen as they are locked into a specific date whether it's ready or not. There is no way in the world they won't release it on July 29th. The media would tear them apart for announcing a date and then not meeting it.
MS has stated a few times, that Windows 10 won't be 'Finished' when its released. It will be 'Ready' The idea being that unlike XP/Vista/7 etc. that were 'Feature Complete' i.e. 'Finished' when they were released. And were then 'Upgraded' by Service Packs or Rollup's. Windows 10 will be 'Ready' for release, but it will continue to be improved, updated and have more features added as time goes by. Its where most of the 'Last Version Of Windows' click bait headlines came from a while back.
Correct. MS is aiming to make Windows 10 a bit like Linux - updated continuously, in smaller doses of features, etc., while the users are already sitting on a base (OneCore).
In fact there isn't any Software which is ever 'finished'!! Microsoft just gave credit to an matter of reality!!
Yes. That's exactly what I had in mind. A serial installed on a OS together with the 'device' builds the installation ID. It's so to say OS version plus serial plus selected hardware identifiers. From this IID M$ can read the serial, the OS version, the hardware identifiers. The serial determines the channel. The IID gets a confirmation ID from their servers if the serial is valid and the OS appears to be activated. At the same time the hardware ID is tied to the license. Short: They have already all they need to issue an upgrade which activates on the machine, they even could use one generic upgrade serial / SKU
Yen, I have earlier discussed about this with Daz, it's not enough for MS to identify the Windows on a device if only the HWID is recorded, you only change an item, say reformat to reinstall, the VOLID is changed and so is the HWID, and the new HWID couldn't be matched with the records in MS activation server. For win8.1 and before(don't know if MS would still be using same procedure for win10), MS has to take into account that from time to time, some items has to be replaced, so Windows check on 10 items, if 3 items were changed, it's still on the same device, if 4 items changed, Windows would decide it's on another device, and need to be re-activated. Therefore, MS server has to record 2 things: the HWID(which could change), and something that is permanent, namely, the product key - to identify the OS.
I think you make it more complicated then it appears, lol. I have said the same you are saying, lol. As I posted a new generic serial / SKU would be enough since they have anything else already. They have the current IID and they have the one when activated that time. At that moment at which the device qualifies the 'HW change counter for the upgrade' is set to zero, means current hardware gets confirmation. Either the physical device qualifies as it is or not. It does not matter if HW has changed before. Still Valid license = valid license. M$ has created the algorithm how to put in the serial, the OS version and several hardware identifiers into the IID. (At least a checksum of real hardware identify strings). So they can calculate by comparison of IIDs which HW has changed. Depending on the channel from which one upgrades (OEM, OA, retail) M$ can use different tolerances. They can be different to previous windows versions...where's the prob?
But if a million activations are done against the same key, how would reinstalls work? The activation server would have to compare it to a million existing configurations to determine if it is still close enough to activate.
Even if individual keys were issued The activation server would have to compare it to a million existing configurations to determine if that key matched the system it was originally used on.
I don't think it's that complicated: Two constants assigned: Edition + Key - either change = deactivation. One variable assigned: Tolerance ( eg: for (tolerance = 0 ; tolerance < 20; tolerance ++)) Change CPU, tolerance + 10 Change RAM tolerance + 4 Change GPU tolerance + 5 Change anything else = new Device = deactivation.
The same way they did before already. They need to store unique hardware identifiers along with the activation data (original IID). AFAIK it was/is the UUID and the MAC address of NIC. (I bet they store a lot more...time stamp, IP address,....brand...) They could also issue a unique serial to identify the PC, yes... Well the question is would it work with a generic serial and I say yes it can....not sure how they realize it though. It's just a tech debate of myself, lol...