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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

Mark my words: Windows 10 will be a free upgrade forever.

They only placed a one year time limit on it in order to increase early adoption. They will no doubt "extend" the period right before its end due to "overwhelming popularity" and then extend it indefinitely after the buzz from the first extension has worn off.

For Microsoft's current strategy it doesn't make sense to leave even a single user on Windows 7, 8, or 8.1. They need everyone on Windows 10, and further still the number of people who, missing the free period, will pay to upgrade to 10 is going to be miniscule.

I might be wrong, but I don't think I am. It is just more compatible with Microsoft's strategy.

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I don't think they can do that due to the relatively weak anti-piracy protections of Windows 7, and the ease with which a SLIC 2.1 pirated copy can be converted to a "genuine" Windows 10. It would leave too big a window open in markets like China, so after the year of free upgrades they want to draw a line under the broken system and move forward.

The decision to offer "free" upgrades also depends on how much alternative income they get from the computers converted to windows 10. Systems converted to Windows 10 provides other revenue streams to Microsoft from big data, and no doubt includes hooks for additional revenue streams such as government TLAs in the future. Data from chinese computers may well be interesting enough for someone that the are willing to sponsor the operating systems.

Remember- if it's free, YOU are the product.

I suspect you're right. They have almost nothing to gain from making people pay to get off Windows 7, especially as they hope to not have the XP issue hang on with extended updates and stuff. 2017 isn't that far away, people need to realize that Windows 7 is now an old OS.

Old and working well. Newer is not always better, it seems software industry is increasingly having problems with stability precisely beause they keep introducing change that a lot of people don't actually want.

Running an unsupported version of any operating system (as Windows 7 will be in 2017) is dangerous and stupid. Once you are no longer receiving security updates, you're basically leaving your front door unlocked and posting a sign pointing it out on the front lawn.

My experience says otherwise.

Windows 7 extended support runs to 14 January 2020.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/search/default...

Also, if you're relying exclusively on your OS for security in 2016 then you're already in trouble, and if security updates aren't necessarily going to be about security any more anyway then there's much less reason to be concerned about whether you get them or not.

But then why can I go to a Microsoft store and buy a copy of 10 for full price?

That's for people that build a PC from scratch and don't have an existing license for Win 7, 8, etc. Or for running in a VM.

Or for people that upgrade their machine for any reason. I recently switched some hardware after my GPU died. My updated copy of Windows 10 (from 8.1) then needed to be activated again. When I tried the automated phone activation it didn't work and I was connected to some support guy that told me to either reinstall 8.1 and then do the free upgrade again or just buy Windows 10. That's a bit annoying as I didn't expect that. Oh well...

It's supposed to be tied to the motherboard. Did you change that?

I did. According to their support page at http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/activation-err... "If you've made significant hardware changes to your device (such as replacing the hard drive or motherboard), contact customer support to activate Windows". I tried that and got the same response again. So it's either reinstall/upgrade or a new license.

When I built a small batch of OEM machines I asked about cycling the hardware in later upgrades. I was told once the motherboard is changed MS consider that a different computer.

Maybe if you replaced the motherboard it might have gotten activated but upgrading it I could understand.

I wish the licencing wasn't such dark arts to work out. Go ask a different company I bet you'll get a different answer.

they aren't gonna just leave money on the table.

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