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General discussionIs Windows 10 the biggest threat to Steam & GOG?(269 posts)(269 posts)
(269 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted November 02, 2015
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hedwards: snip
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Brasas: Everything I hear about W10 is that it's a very good OS. Here on GOG foks have a bias towards Linux, towards anti DRM, which is not representative of the vast majority of users - be them consumer or enterprise.

The security / privacy features that folks here dislike with a passion on W10 are exactly the features that will make it be hugely successful in the enterprise and faciliaate development on the platform. And what folks use at work, they will tend to want to use at home.

IMO MS is no longer complacent, and has identified the threats facing it very well. The name of the game is execution though, and so far I like what I see. W10 has probably on its own managed to stop the bleeding of users towards Google and Linux and might help bring back some developers that got burned - repeatedly - in the past decade.

Apple is a tougher nut to crack, because of its position on their phones and tablets - but Steve Jobs is gone, and so the window of opportunity is there.

Love it or hate it, I think MS is back in the game so to speak... they always were around, just it seemed they had fallen asleep or something. That hurt them relatively speaking, but they were strong enough it might not have done any lasting damage.
MS clearly doesn't get it. I agree that they're no longer complacent, but their sense of where they need to go is so far off that I doubt they'll figure it out any time soon. If they're lucky they can coast on inertia long enough to figure it out.

They missed the boat completely on mobile, they're going to have to convince people to use apps out of the Windows store and have those apps work properly on desktop, laptop and mobil in order to have any hope of catching up. I doubt that's going to work out very well. I don't think they can bully their way past Android and iOS to get enough developers to make it a competitive platform.

I don't agree with the notion that 10 has done anything positive for MS. At best they were able to buy themselves a bit of time by allowing people using 7 to remain on Windows without having to pay. But 8 and 8.1 are going to be supported for a goodly number of years.

Also, keep in mind that these people didn't pay for the upgrade. Many of them didn't even want the upgrade, but are being tricked into upgrading with that recent change to the classification of the upgrade.

Despite certain people's belief that 10 is doing well, it's pretty damning that MS is having to first resort to giving away the OS for free and then tricking people into updating it when that wasn't enough.
Posted November 02, 2015
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Tallima: Win10 OEM is bound to hardware ID. The Win10 retail is bound to your retail serial key/license.
Yes. But Win10 upgrade is not Win10 OEM, even if it's bound to the Hardware ID. From what I recall, you can revoke an OEM activation, but you can't revoke the upgrade activation. Too long since I used this kind of OEM license though, so it is quite possible that I'm wrong about being able to revoke it.
Pre-post edit: Seems like transferring an OEM license from one machine to another requires you to contact Microsoft. Not sure if the transfer is in accordance to the EULA or not, so let's err in the side of caution and assume that OEM licenses cannot be transferred.

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Tallima: License Transfer: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-win_upgrade/windows-7-retail-license-upgrade-to-windows-10/a6a1cc4b-720d-41cc-87c2-7eb7dd5166fc
Not an official answer. At least 2 people pointing it out in that thread as well.

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Tallima: Of course, where in the actual agreement all of this is? I don't know. Before I upgraded, I found something from a MS Support Engineer who said your Win10 would expire in 2020 if upgraded from 7 and 2023 if upgraded from 8. But I'm not finding it now.

Here's MS OS Lifecycles: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/lifecycle
If your license expired when the lifecycle of the OS ended, then there are no valid Windows XP licenses available.

Either way, thank you for the answer
Posted November 03, 2015
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Tallima: Your retail Win10 license expires when your previous Windows license expires.
I strongly doubt that ... and I don't think a win license ever "expire". You can use it for as long as you like, I think you confuse providing support with expiry date.
Post edited November 03, 2015 by mobutu
Posted November 03, 2015
Non-sense. Maybe Steam should tremble before the Mighty Gog.
Post edited November 03, 2015 by Gog8
Posted November 03, 2015
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Tallima: Of course, where in the actual agreement all of this is? I don't know. Before I upgraded, I found something from a MS Support Engineer who said your Win10 would expire in 2020 if upgraded from 7 and 2023 if upgraded from 8. But I'm not finding it now.

Here's MS OS Lifecycles: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/lifecycle
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JMich: If your license expired when the lifecycle of the OS ended, then there are no valid Windows XP licenses available.

Either way, thank you for the answer
That's correct. Basically when you take the free upgrade to 10, you have 31 days to downgrade back to the previous version where the license remains valid. After that time you're stuck with 10 permanently.

In those cases the license is tied to the hardware and I have yet to hear anybody say that the license would expire on a set date. Although, at some point the activation servers will probably go down. But, the XP activation servers are still up, so who knows when that might be.

One of the interesting things to note is that it looks like MS is going to allow non-genuine copies to upgrade to 10 for free with the idea that people would do that and would find that they are willing to pay. IMHO, if MS does actually do that, it seems like the best thing to do would be to use a non-genuine install to try out 10 so that you don't run the risk of losing the proper license. Then for folks that don't mind the crap that is 10, you can always do the upgrade the proper way.
Posted November 03, 2015
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hedwards: snip
Ok. I see your point but disagree. I think you're seeing the MS of 10 and 5 years ago, not the MS since Nadella replaced Balmer. And I also think you are - like most normal users like us usually do - discounting the importance of the enterprise market. When the enterprises resisted the adoption of Win8 it really put MS in a tough spot. It's no coincidence Google actually managed to get their Cloud productivity suites some market share in parallel, and Office - not Windows - is a main MS cash cow. If only for reverting to a "normal" situation W10 is a huge winner for MS. As for the platform convergence aspect, we'll have to wait and see what happens. Microsoft became the behemoth it is today by focusing on the power users, I think they might very well be able to reclaim that again.
Posted November 03, 2015
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hedwards: That's correct. Basically when you take the free upgrade to 10, you have 31 days to downgrade back to the previous version where the license remains valid. After that time you're stuck with 10 permanently.
Edit: Seems like the previous license is transformed into a Win10 one. Disregard the following.

The previous license remains valid regardless of the time that passed. The 30 days (not 31) is to have the option to revert to your previous OS by using the built-in downgrade.
Post edited November 05, 2015 by JMich
Posted November 03, 2015
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hedwards: snip
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Brasas: Ok. I see your point but disagree. I think you're seeing the MS of 10 and 5 years ago, not the MS since Nadella replaced Balmer.
This Ballmer? :D
Posted November 03, 2015
Bears are the #1 threat
Posted November 03, 2015
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qwixter: Bears are the #1 threat
Not as long as they have Jay Cutler they aren't!
Posted November 03, 2015
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Klumpen0815: All I've personally seen Win10 doing so far is driving more people towards Linux and Mac
and driving the other people mad.

I just hope, that M$'s struggle for more and more control will be their end in the long term.
Multiplatform has become a thing and they can only get their control for very few titles, so I don't see a threat at all, actually I'm quite glad about what they are doing since it's so utterly wrong that more people have begun so see it for what it is.

This year, the moment has arrived, at which I had a more user friendly experience in handling a notebook for office work, web-stuff, gaming and compiling with Linux than I had with the same system with Windows (7). Those are odd times indeed and if I look at how much worse things are with Windows 10, well... :D

That's exactly the response they hoped for with this announcement.
Making people do premature decisions by appealing to a money-saving instinct and so getting people on board that may not even have switched over otherwise.

Is the "free upgrade" only free in the first year and transformed into a subscription later on?
Once it's activated, it's permanently yours. No hidden cost whatsoever.
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JMich: Yes. But Win10 upgrade is not Win10 OEM, even if it's bound to the Hardware ID. From what I recall, you can revoke an OEM activation, but you can't revoke the upgrade activation. Too long since I used this kind of OEM license though, so it is quite possible that I'm wrong about being able to revoke it.
Pre-post edit: Seems like transferring an OEM license from one machine to another requires you to contact Microsoft. Not sure if the transfer is in accordance to the EULA or not, so let's err in the side of caution and assume that OEM licenses cannot be transferred.

Not an official answer. At least 2 people pointing it out in that thread as well.

If your license expired when the lifecycle of the OS ended, then there are no valid Windows XP licenses available.

Either way, thank you for the answer
If you upgrade FPP, the resulting end will be FPP. You can revoke your resulting FPP key/license by downgrading within first month, else it's permanent upgrade.

The original key will be accepted by Windows 10 sometimes later, but not now.
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JMich: The previous license remains valid regardless of the time that passed. The 30 days (not 31) is to have the option to revert to your previous OS by using the built-in downgrade.
No it's not. Once you upgrade and stay there, you can't reuse your original Windows.

You can, but it's a breach of EULA and thus it's piracy.
Post edited November 03, 2015 by zeroxxx
Posted November 03, 2015
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hedwards: That's correct. Basically when you take the free upgrade to 10, you have 31 days to downgrade back to the previous version where the license remains valid. After that time you're stuck with 10 permanently.
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JMich: The previous license remains valid regardless of the time that passed. The 30 days (not 31) is to have the option to revert to your previous OS by using the built-in downgrade.
OK, that explains that. I thought I had 10 installed for more than 31 days. I think they could do themselves a big favor by thinking things like this through before issuing press releases.

I thought I was able to do it because I had an OEM copy from Lenovo's small business line of laptops. Those allow you to install and validate on other computers as long as you don't have it on more than one at once.
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hedwards: snip
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Brasas: Ok. I see your point but disagree. I think you're seeing the MS of 10 and 5 years ago, not the MS since Nadella replaced Balmer. And I also think you are - like most normal users like us usually do - discounting the importance of the enterprise market. When the enterprises resisted the adoption of Win8 it really put MS in a tough spot. It's no coincidence Google actually managed to get their Cloud productivity suites some market share in parallel, and Office - not Windows - is a main MS cash cow. If only for reverting to a "normal" situation W10 is a huge winner for MS. As for the platform convergence aspect, we'll have to wait and see what happens. Microsoft became the behemoth it is today by focusing on the power users, I think they might very well be able to reclaim that again.
I think you're vastly underestimating how dysfunctional MS has been. They've taken steps under Nadella to address that through things like ditching the stacked rankings, but it's going to be quite a while before they're free of the incompetence and sabotage that characterized the Ballsack era of MS.

As mush as people love to hate Bill, at least he was enough of a nerd to concern himself about what the product was. Even if they didn't have the manpower to do it properly at all times.

The enterprise market is there, but mostly because Exchange and Excell don't really have appropriate replacements. At least not for the enterprise market. It is a lot of money, but it's not so much money that they can afford to piss off regular users. The enterprise users are not going to train their employees to use MS products if they're no longer being used by virtually everybody at home. It just doesn't make any business sense to do that.
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JMich: The previous license remains valid regardless of the time that passed. The 30 days (not 31) is to have the option to revert to your previous OS by using the built-in downgrade.
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zeroxxx: No it's not. Once you upgrade and stay there, you can't reuse your original Windows.

You can, but it's a breach of EULA and thus it's piracy.
It's just infringement, but it's pretty damn close to being piracy. I'm not sure how it can be piracy if you have the install media legitimately.

Anyways, MS did themselves a huge disservice, by not laying out the policy clearly early on. It's rather confusing and depending upon which sources one looks at, it can be completely different.
Post edited November 03, 2015 by hedwards
Posted November 03, 2015
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hedwards: OK, that explains that. I thought I had 10 installed for more than 31 days. I think they could do themselves a big favor by thinking things like this through before issuing press releases.

I thought I was able to do it because I had an OEM copy from Lenovo's small business line of laptops. Those allow you to install and validate on other computers as long as you don't have it on more than one at once.
I think you're vastly underestimating how dysfunctional MS has been. They've taken steps under Nadella to address that through things like ditching the stacked rankings, but it's going to be quite a while before they're free of the incompetence and sabotage that characterized the Ballsack era of MS.

As mush as people love to hate Bill, at least he was enough of a nerd to concern himself about what the product was. Even if they didn't have the manpower to do it properly at all times.

The enterprise market is there, but mostly because Exchange and Excell don't really have appropriate replacements. At least not for the enterprise market. It is a lot of money, but it's not so much money that they can afford to piss off regular users. The enterprise users are not going to train their employees to use MS products if they're no longer being used by virtually everybody at home. It just doesn't make any business sense to do that.
It's just infringement, but it's pretty damn close to being piracy. I'm not sure how it can be piracy if you have the install media legitimately.

Anyways, MS did themselves a huge disservice, by not laying out the policy clearly early on. It's rather confusing and depending upon which sources one looks at, it can be completely different.
Software piracy is the illegal copying, distribution, or use of software.

You own a license for one copy of Windows, no more, no less. The install media is upgraded along with the license. Either you use one and uninstall the other, or do not install anything altogether. Anything more is a piracy.
Posted November 03, 2015
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Windows 7 works fine, I dont console game, and the only reason I would switch to windows 10 is if I absolutely have to. Heck the only reason most GOG people use windows is because we cant get devs to fully commit to a single free OS that is games friendly. Sad to say I feel that they are FORCED to use windows/macOS.
Posted November 03, 2015
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Gnostic: Because it is a fact. Even when told not to, it still phone home.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/212160-windows-10-still-phones-home-even-when-ordered-not-to-do-so
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JMich: Disable the spyware through the proper methods, or use this which automates such process. And no, toggling an on/off switch isn't the proper method.
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Leroux: I wonder what would happen if you should need to reinstall Windows at some point though?
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JMich: When you upgrade using the free offer, the machine's hardware ID hash is sent to MS servers. Whenever a new installation occurs, the hardware ID is checked against the values in the servers, and if it is found there, the OS is activated. If it's not found, the OS will complain about activation, will prevent you from changing some visual options, and will have a watermark on the bottom right. Other than that, it will continue functioning perfectly.
Problem is the software is not made by Microsoft and works against Microsoft interest. With forced update, Microsoft can break the functionality of it when they want.
Unlike Window 7 where it is stable and I stop updating it for months without problems, Window 10 can install new spyware anytime.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionIs Windows 10 the biggest threat to Steam & GOG?(269 posts)(269 posts)
(269 posts)