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General discussionWindows 10, upgrades and registration keys(6 posts)solved(6 posts)solved
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Posted May 18, 2016
Hi,

bought a new laptop which came with a Win 10 OEM home license. Want to reinstall it all without all the bloat (there's a specific iso someone created, including relevant drivers out of the box, out there).

Am wondering now, though. I do have a currently unused Win 7 pro retail disk & license around that, at least in theory, would allow me to upgrade from the win 10 OEM to the win 10 retail version when I reinstall (ready-made ISO contains ei.cfg to facilitate that); and incidently upgrade me from the Home to the Pro edition.

Am not so sure whether it's worth it though ...

From what I can see this time round most of what the Pro version of Win10 offers doesn't really have much value to me. (Only thing interesting is BitLocker; albeit not sensible with what I plan to do OS wise, see below). What could be interesting is if upgrading to a Retail win 7 version would translate into a Windows 10 retail version that I could re-install on a diiferent PC in the future - but if I understand it correctly that's not guaranteed? There seems to be awfully little precise information out there how Microsoft treats retail keys upgraded to Win 10 in the long term.

Would you stick with the OEM version - this is a laptop, remember, so no big hardware changes are likley - and keep the Win 7 retail license as is? I don't plan to build a Desktop within the next few months so would lose the free upgrade window if I let it sit around; might be on the cards in the longer term future, though.

Note that I am mainly a Linux user these days. I collaborate on projects now and then with otheres which means using software that's only available in Windows, so having a copy around is sensible. My plan with the Laptop is to, eventually, buy a bigger m2ssd and swap out the currently installed one. Then use that new internal one as the Windows drive and the old internal one in an external case connected via Thunderbolt 3 as my Linux every-day installation. (That way round given that I can acesss Fat32/NTFS partitions from within Linux natively, but that Windows can't use ext2/3/4 partitions ... eventhough I'd actually rather use the internal drive for Linux ...)

If I'd build a desktop sometime in the future it'd be a Linux machine, primarily, too ... albeit with the odd excursion to Windows when needing those win only programmes during collaborations. Is it more sensible to just keep hold of a Win 7 license for that option, even if I'd lose out on the upgrade grace period?

Thoughts?
This question / problem has been solved by zeroxxximage
Posted May 18, 2016
avatar
Mnemon: Hi,

bought a new laptop which came with a Win 10 OEM home license. Want to reinstall it all without all the bloat (there's a specific iso someone created, including relevant drivers out of the box, out there).

Am wondering now, though. I do have a currently unused Win 7 pro retail disk & license around that, at least in theory, would allow me to upgrade from the win 10 OEM to the win 10 retail version when I reinstall (ready-made ISO contains ei.cfg to facilitate that); and incidently upgrade me from the Home to the Pro edition.

Am not so sure whether it's worth it though ...

From what I can see this time round most of what the Pro version of Win10 offers doesn't really have much value to me. (Only thing interesting is BitLocker; albeit not sensible with what I plan to do OS wise, see below). What could be interesting is if upgrading to a Retail win 7 version would translate into a Windows 10 retail version that I could re-install on a diiferent PC in the future - but if I understand it correctly that's not guaranteed? There seems to be awfully little precise information out there how Microsoft treats retail keys upgraded to Win 10 in the long term.

Would you stick with the OEM version - this is a laptop, remember, so no big hardware changes are likley - and keep the Win 7 retail license as is? I don't plan to build a Desktop within the next few months so would lose the free upgrade window if I let it sit around; might be on the cards in the longer term future, though.

Note that I am mainly a Linux user these days. I collaborate on projects now and then with otheres which means using software that's only available in Windows, so having a copy around is sensible. My plan with the Laptop is to, eventually, buy a bigger m2ssd and swap out the currently installed one. Then use that new internal one as the Windows drive and the old internal one in an external case connected via Thunderbolt 3 as my Linux every-day installation. (That way round given that I can acesss Fat32/NTFS partitions from within Linux natively, but that Windows can't use ext2/3/4 partitions ... eventhough I'd actually rather use the internal drive for Linux ...)

If I'd build a desktop sometime in the future it'd be a Linux machine, primarily, too ... albeit with the odd excursion to Windows when needing those win only programmes during collaborations. Is it more sensible to just keep hold of a Win 7 license for that option, even if I'd lose out on the upgrade grace period?

Thoughts?
I have just been through this process. I brought a full version of win 7, installed that on one ssd, popped it out and then updated the other ssd which had win 8.1 on it to 10. Generally speaking I wouldn't expect the license to carry over, even full out the box win 7 made me jump through hoops to activate.

As for bloat, yes there is a lot. I found a couple of programs which remove the spyware and can uninstall the apps that come with it. Once I cleared off the god awful tiles from the start bar it wasn't too far off. No real noticeable speed increases, start bar still isn't great, everything seems a bit hidden. But for free, well, I will keep a copy on its own ssd, and keep win 7 and win xp and Linux on their own ssd's just so I have good coverage.
Posted May 19, 2016
I think that I would install Windows 7 and subsequently avoid updating to 10. The more I use 10, the less I like it. Key issue of me is that I am unable to control updates. ut there is a range of other unwanted things, starting with the Windows phone interface, the possibility to install dual boot and the general feeling this thing phones home whenever it can.

As it seems, 10 pro has a way to somehow control updates, so maybe that's an option after all ,-)
Posted May 19, 2016
Tricky situation.

1. If you're NOT willing to spend money, then keep them as they are.

2. If you're willing to spend money, buy a harddrive, put it into that laptop and install Windows 10 Pro (upgrade from 7 FPP). After that, disconnect. When you build new machine, just plug that harddrive into new machine and Windows will complain about hardware changes and deactivates itself. Simply call Microsoft and have them reactivate Windows 10 for you.

As for bloat, just wipe everything. There's an option to do so inside Windows 10. Whenever I receive OEM machines, I wipe them all without reformatting and those Windows 10 are as good as vanilla.
Posted May 19, 2016
Ye; as said I have a ready made iso out there (checked what's on) with pre-collected drivers and all for that laptop sitting nicely and ready here. Re-install will happen fairly soon. I am not that sure I'll get around using Win10 on this one as the Windows OS. It has a 4k screen; bought that one given it is wide gamut; do a lot of Photo / Video editing. Win 7 sadly just is far too limited in how it scales up on such a high res screen. Also not that sure manfuacturer will bother checking Win7 compatibility for the odd special driver needed for this.

I don't particularly hate Win10 as an OS; it workes well enough on that end and fairly decent software engineering; the privacy issues and the general invasivness behind it is annoying though. And, sheesh, having a central repositry that software and driver updates go through is so much nicer than needing to chase them up all over the net. Dislike that Windows seems to have drifted off even further toward streamlining user access to options, too - but alas always happens with mainstream software. Happened to have folders with colons in them (all offline backups of GOG games incidentally) on my external hard drive. Works fine in Linux, Windows had to 'repair' those folders by which it meant it deleted them - but didn't really signal it was about to do that. Not much lost, am downloading them again, but still annoying.

Truth told only thing I really need it for is Adobe / Avid / etc, which are the industry standards in Photography / Video work and still only operate on Mac OS / Windows natively. I.e. if you collaborate with others it's hard to avoid those programmes which necessitate Windows - and there's little that's quite as feature rich when it comes to Video editing on Linux. [Darktable is better than Lightroom now.]

[It's fabulous that DaVinci Resolve has a native Linux version though!]

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avatar
zeroxxx: Tricky situation.

1. If you're NOT willing to spend money, then keep them as they are.

2. If you're willing to spend money, buy a harddrive, put it into that laptop and install Windows 10 Pro (upgrade from 7 FPP). After that, disconnect. When you build new machine, just plug that harddrive into new machine and Windows will complain about hardware changes and deactivates itself. Simply call Microsoft and have them reactivate Windows 10 for you.
The laptop only has an internal m2.slot for hard drives. Given the cost of decent ones it's not really worth it going that way just for a Win10 license / letting it sleep somewhere until needed. Rather spend that money on other stuff :). Mhm. Guess I'll probably just let the Win7 disk sit for now and continue on with the OEM key.
Posted May 20, 2016
With enough RAM, virtual Windows when needed.
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General discussionWindows 10, upgrades and registration keys(6 posts)solved(6 posts)solved
(6 posts)solved