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Windows 10 Free Upgrade Available in 190 Countries Today

blogs.windows.com

121–130 of 402 posts

Re: Windows 10 Free Upgrade Available in 190 Countries Today

#121
post #58

Dear marketing people, please stop using "The best ever". If you make a new product it should be better than the previous version, it it's not, you did something very wrong.

Maybe they are trying to say this will not be another Windows 8. Or Vista. Or ME.

Re: Windows 10 Free Upgrade Available in 190 Countries Today

#122
post #41
post #6

Note that the upgrade will remove your Windows built-in DVD player. The right to play DVDs must be paid for every computer. You paid it when you bought the Windows 7 or 8 that you'll maybe upgrade to 10. Now the upgrade to Windows 10 takes that feature away from you. They apparently (the twitter message isn't actually the company statement) plan to return it "sometime in the future" and "if it might be free or if it…

> Note that the upgrade will remove your Windows built-in DVD player. That's bonkers. Ok, it was never a great player and every half-decent geek uses VLC or better, but still, plenty of people use MediaPlayer every day. Tech support hotlines will be overwhelmed by furious customers.

Yes another good reason to switch to Mac. None of my current Macs have DVD drives, so I simply don't have to deal with this problem ;)

Re: Windows 10 Free Upgrade Available in 190 Countries Today

#123

I'm really excited for this release and especially excited about Cortana. If it works as advertised I'll be buying a windows phone. I'm ready for a device that i can just talk to with a normal voice and ask it stuff.

It works fairly well, in the manner of Siri. It copes with moderate Scottish accents, which is impressive. The downsides are that you have to have location services turned on (bad for battery) and, like Siri, everything you say is recorded and may be farmed out mechanical-turk style for analysis.

Re: Windows 10 Free Upgrade Available in 190 Countries Today

#124

This looks amazing but I'm disappointed at the absence of 'Windows 10 devices' launching alongside this release. If anything this seems like a missed sales opportunity for Microsoft/ hardware vendors.

Have they ever synchronised the OEM release with hardware releases? I always thought they released the boxed version and then a few months later it started appearing on PC's.

Either way, Windows 10 seems rushed. They're pushing patches as we speak to the "RTM" version.

Re: Windows 10 Free Upgrade Available in 190 Countries Today

#126
post #118
post #85

Anyone here know much about Windows licensing? This seems like a good opportunity to ask. I never run Windows on bare metal. I only run Windows on virtual machines on my Mac desktop and Mac laptop; only for personal use; and only on the rare occasion when I need to run the odd Windows-only application. I would like to go legit this time around, but it's nigh-impossible to find any specific documentation from Microsof…

Microsoft expects me to buy a separate, full Windows license for each virtual machine I create, for each host machine I run it on . Yes, that's what the license says. In practice, what corporate VM users do is get MSDN licenses, which are assigned to the developer. I have one. It's basically a license to not worry about licensing: I can run as many copies of whatever I like, so long as it's "for testing and developme…

Thanks. That's what I was afraid the answer would be.

The cheapest MSDN subscription (OS-only) is $699/yr. For that price I could buy about 6 copies of Windows 10 Home edition. Or 2 new laptops each with a Windows license included. Sheesh.

Re: Windows 10 Free Upgrade Available in 190 Countries Today

#127
post #6

Note that the upgrade will remove your Windows built-in DVD player. The right to play DVDs must be paid for every computer. You paid it when you bought the Windows 7 or 8 that you'll maybe upgrade to 10. Now the upgrade to Windows 10 takes that feature away from you. They apparently (the twitter message isn't actually the company statement) plan to return it "sometime in the future" and "if it might be free or if it…

VLC plays DVDs just fine for free, by decoding CSS on the fly. One might argue that that "The right to play DVDs must be paid for every computer" but I have never signed such agreement with anyone, ever. If I legally bought a DVD then I can legally watch it - maybe in US people would argue that decryption of a legally bought DVD is "hacking" but fortunately I don't live in that beautiful country.

It's probably/usually inclusive in your OS or computer purchase

Re: Windows 10 Free Upgrade Available in 190 Countries Today

#128
post #85

Anyone here know much about Windows licensing? This seems like a good opportunity to ask. I never run Windows on bare metal. I only run Windows on virtual machines on my Mac desktop and Mac laptop; only for personal use; and only on the rare occasion when I need to run the odd Windows-only application. I would like to go legit this time around, but it's nigh-impossible to find any specific documentation from Microsof…

That's what the license terms say for normal retail licenses of the consumer versions, yes. This is pretty understandable for machines run concurrently. If you have two VMs running 24/7 it makes sense to just consider them "machines" exactly as if they were physical.

The question is what happens if you have two VMs with identical hardware where you only ever have one active? Microsofts licensing probably doesn't consider this scenario, so I think it would be a matter of interpretation. In theory you could transfer the license back and forth between the VMs (assuming that stopping and unmounting the inactive VM disk counts as "removing the software" from that machine).

Re: Windows 10 Free Upgrade Available in 190 Countries Today

#129
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 10 still supports music and video playback just fine, through applications called Xbox Music and Xbox Video: "Xbox Video supports all the video files you’ve probably been downloading the VLC Media Player desktop app to watch." http://www.gottabemobile.com/2015/01/25/windows-10-vs-window...

Why can't I just play my media (which I paid for) on my hardware (which I paid for) in "normal" software (which... I thought I paid for). Instead I have to have the Xbox brand shoved in my face at every opportunity?

[deleted]

Re: Windows 10 Free Upgrade Available in 190 Countries Today

#130
post #122
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Note that the upgrade will remove your Windows built-in DVD player. That's bonkers. Ok, it was never a great player and every half-decent geek uses VLC or better, but still, plenty of people use MediaPlayer every day. Tech support hotlines will be overwhelmed by furious customers.

Yes another good reason to switch to Mac. None of my current Macs have DVD drives, so I simply don't have to deal with this problem ;)

> DVD Player doesn't work, better throw this laptop out and spend $1k on a new one. Oh well…
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