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Comment by fastssd | Hacker News Reader

You are not required to pay the windows license fee. You can simply download an ISO off of Microsoft's website and use it, you only get a watermark in the corner.

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Fun fact: that watermark is created by explorer.exe, and if you're not running explorer.exe it doesn't show up. I had a box that went through one too many hardware changes and Windows decided that it wasn't on the same machine. I didn't bother contacting support for months because I had set the Windows "shell" to be steam.exe in Big Picture mode, and so I rarely got bothered by it.

It's worth noting that the watermark is always visible in the corner, even in games.

you can run a script that will remove the watermark for ~4 hours. you can run it as many times as you’d like, just requires a restart.

since i never play a game for that long, it works out great.

You are always paying Microsoft, one way or the other.

Death and Windows licensing fees, like B. Franklin said.

Last time I tried that, it would not install any updates for Windows. Not sure if I was doing something wrong, but without updates this is not a good long-term solution...

You can absolutely install updates. It's what I run as a second OS for very very few games and graphics editing (unregistered with watermark)

Would you mind linking to this ISO and the T&Cs? I've only ever used their ISOs for VMs -- which are how I use Windows, occasionally and rarely -- and they have pretty harsh conditions like timeoutes, etc.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10I...

It works as described. One caveat: the website won't let you download an ISO if your browser's user-agent is set to Windows, instead it'll prompt you to use the Win10 media creation tool. But you can download the ISO if accessing from Linux/macOS/Android/etc., or by using a user-agent changer browser extension on Windows.

Every budget gaming computer I built for friends was like this because budget.

I just installed win 10 pro on my MacBook with bootcamp. I bought a OEM license key off a sketchy site (gamers-outlet.net) for 4 Euros. It worked.

Should upgrade free to Windows 11 too.

I did this before in the past with a key off of eBay (no indication made by the seller that the key was not legit other than the suspiciously low price) and everything was fine until it came time to reformat and start fresh roughly a year later - at that point the key no longer worked and the seller vanished from eBay!

For me it specifically states that the key will not work if you reformat. That's fine.

but now you are going to pay with your data just like facebook etc?

You're doing that either way, just like you're going to see ads regardless of whether you paid $$$ for a Windows license, pirated a key or just life with the water-mark and other limits of an unlicensed Windows.

Problem is you pay with data anyway now:

Microsoft and Google show you ads regardless of if you pay or not.

Seriously even my alarm clock app that I pay a monthly fee for tried to ask nicely if it was ok that they tracked me across web sites after Apple started enforcing their new rules.

---------

And: If anyone has a good alarm clock app for iPhone that makes sure I'm out of bed before it turns off, and that is a one time payment or a reasonable fee or even open source I'm all ears.

Versions without a watermark are freely available from your local neighbourhood torrent site.

I consider my companies 1000+ server/desktop licences payment enough tbh.

And with the number of computers I've bought, I've purchased Windows hundreds of times.

I have no qualms about a pirated windows install. None. At. All.

I try to avoid Windows (it makes git and compiles slow, just doesn't cut it in the ux department after being spoiled with KDE and Elementary and they double dip by shoving ads in my face even after I've bought the Professional license) but so far I pay.

Just as I'd like others to pay me if/when I release paid software.

That said, especially after Microsoft started double dipping Professional licenses they cannot complain if ordinary users don't see the point any longer.

My primary and only justification for using windows is games (the 30% from the article).

I do real work with Linux.

But again, I've purchased windows hundreds of times, many of those being forced "purchases" due to smoky-back-of-room deals with OEMs. Frankly, MS exhausted all of my goodwill ages ago, and I've yet to see a real change in those underlying tactics.

A good point.

MS has "sold" a fair bunch of licenses that have gone unused.

I'll keep buying licenses if I use it - and keep telling people that Linux has been usable for ordinary people the last decade, is faster, more exciting and collect less data about you and your family.

PS: MS employees here, your company really had the chance to be the serious choice but after getting ads on Professional licensed machines I just don't believe the marketing anymore.

Funny, I stopped believing the marketing after Windows 98 and The Halloween Papers.

> compiles slow

Disable Windows Defender on your source folders (or just altogether to see the difference). Someday MS will figure out a good balance with all this.

Ut helps somewhat but the difference still seems to be around 30%.

It is something about the file system or io subsystem I think.

Windows Defender scans every file before the OS hands it off, so builds with lots of files with really, really suck.

You don't have to download windows from torrents. Just dowload it from Microsoft. You can get rid of the watermark by "registering" it with a fake registration server. No need to download and run anything. Just copy few simple lines found with google into admin console.

You are getting fully functional version with this. With updates and everything.

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