You aren't doing it right then , back when I started they sent me a full XP-MCE machine, dual tuners, big storage drives in it, lots of memory so I could test it correctly. Also sent me 2 of their first gen Extenders to test as well (not xboxs, the stand alone extenders, these weren't even branded, and I've never seen another one like 'em). BUT that was a long time ago...
I don't know what to called this. Perhaps, the irony of what you said is very revealing of a scenario that would want to make me loose hope of being an Insider testing the Previews! You are very funny, buddy.
I have merged this with an older thread, since GabeAul just parroted old news. This time there is no word about pirated versions though. It is not clear yet how the upgrade will be published. To me reasonable would be to do it via WU (GWX)...WU could verify the license and then to allow an upgrade. And to be a member of the insider program is obviously not enough.... Most interesting is how they'll upgrade an w7 OEM:SLP license...and if at all...and how/if they expire the old license. They just could issue a new generic OEM key...
The burning question is whether they will target the loader , considering they have to get as many onto the Win10 platform as possible to maximise the (monetization) of their services - and most are Win7 OEM - they may grant them free upgrade rights anyway (bios mods included) without insisting on COA proof - if the Win7 guys rebuked Win8 they mostly likely will Win10 as well if they have to jump through hoops. M$ will make their bucks either way.
In my eyes MS will not waste time by hunting down this handful of Bios modders and even these few thousand loader users are peanuts. i have no idea what percentage it might be in total but I believe that it is far below 1% worldwide though
I don't know if your guess (1%) is right, but I totally agree with you. The only thing that is not quite out of my mind is....OA licenses are 'indirect licenses' and can be finally excluded. Preinstalled licenses come from the OEM themselves and are usually never upgradeable.
Wasn't there a survey / results released not long ago about China and how many of it's machines were unlicensed ? Was something ridiculous like 70-80-90% China makes up a fairly big % of the worlds Windows users
Win7 licencing is not supported at present so they will have to offer a new key - there is also only a Pro OEM SKU for Win 10 currently, thus transferring non-Pro licence will also have to be Non-SLP, the OA /EULA will probably be replaced in such an event
I even believe that MS opens many more doors just to push 10 forward as much as possible. Consider the fact that it is valid only for 1 year and I'm quite sure that they catch many users beyond that small time frame. Life cycle of hardware is not like it was some years before and as it is said that free upgrade is only for lifetime of hardware I can imagine quite some nice biz for MS when OEM machines die after warranty is over which automatically leads to a new machine with 10 preinstalled.
They could do the same with 'Insiders' that they did with WMC. Every Insider signed up with an MS Account, so that account gets a Key which has to be activated by a set date. And then the key is locked to that H/W. This is the interesting part, normally when you 'upgrade' to kills the original license key. But how will they stop OEM versions self activating from the SLP/SLIC in the BIOS. It wouldn't be hard for MS to target and block 'loaders' Modded BIOS would be a little harder, but still possible. A while back BBC's Click magazine had a section a licensing (I think it was something to do with XP's end of life) But, they claimed around 10% of UK PC's were 'unlicensed' they also mentioned a lot of the owners were 'unaware' of it. They clearly want as many people as possible to move to Windows 10 and they want to do it quickly. I think the idea is to get everyone to upgrade regardless of license. Although they can't say that openly, hence all the confusion over whether 'pirates' will be able to upgrade. We've all herd the rumours about a 'subscription' based Windows SKU, and last month we herd about the 'Ads' that will appear in the Start Menu and the Lockscreen. Then add that MS is saying this is the 'Last' version of Windows, as it will be updated continually. I think the idea is to get everyone on to Windows 10 as that's the base for the subscription model, it would be worth their while to lock everyone into Windows 10 from both a piracy point of view as well as the Windows Store/Dev point of view. The business model seems to work for drug dealers. The real question is will we all get a 'Free' upgrade to 'Windows 10 with Bing' and then have to pay for the upgrade to the none ad supported 'Home' 'Professional' or 'Enterprise' like in Windows 8.x Or will we get a 'Free' upgrade to the equivalent SKU to then one we have.
Z- "But, they claimed around 10% of UK PC's were 'unlicensed' they also mentioned a lot of the owners were 'unaware' of it" I would guess MS, like most businesses, has a "pilferage figure" built into their budget.
Honestly i believe they will force the W10 update onto everyone via WU (well kinda, just annnoying you a lot to upgrade) and if you have some SLIC or loader or possibly even WMC from W8 it may very well just give you a activated W10 with no complaints, because honestly.. there is nothing to gain here as Microsoft needs all the users on W10 to build out the ecosystem for Developers to develop Apps and for Users to stay on Windows because of said apps and this is IMO why there is no "price" microsoft can put on pirates because every pirate is 1 user more for the ecosystem as a whole and THAT matters, losing what.. a few billion because people didn't want to pay for W10? Im sure Microsoft can afford not earning a bit in exchange for actually getting users onto the platform to boast to developers. Also if we take into consideration the 1 billion goal (it's realistic but only...if) that's only possible by getting most Pirates onto W10 and also getting a lot of enterprises to upgrade to W10 ASAP but that's why there are sooo many new security related features in W10, they really want Enterprises to use W10 and not W7. Who knows, as every W10 upgrade is actually Professional (at least right now) maybe they actually plan on releasing Windows 10 (core) for free download or it's just a branding change. Windows (instead of Windows Mobile) Windows Pro (desktop) Windows Holographic (hololens) Windows Athens (iot/wearables, still a codename) Windows <insert future product> Xbox..
M$ (the twitter guy) said only valid licenses can upgrade to w10 for free. M$ said some licenses (VL) will be excluded, though. The OEMS want to sell more (preinstalled) PCs /hardware. The way via mimicking OEM:SLP of w7 to come to a free w10 license would mean negative news to M$ since it is actually a method to circumvent their w10 licensing model. How many legit w7 OEM:SLP licenses are still running compared to mimicked versions and what would it mean to the OEMs if customers could use the old w7 preinstallation hardware for a free w10? Considering these..to exclude OEM:SLP as an upgradable version seems (still) reasonable to me....the first sentence says pirates are basically not welcome.
VL is excluded because that's not retail, OEM and "RETAIL" (all consumer SKUs) are the only ones getting the upgrade no need to assume some random things like OEM:SLP not counting, that's not even reasonable at all.