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Comment by getsat | Hacker News Reader

Will there be a way to buy a digital download of it?

I recently wanted to bootcamp my Macbook Pro to play some games Windows-only games. I went to Microsoft's website and looked at the options for buying Windows 8. The only options were a retail DVD which would be shipped (and I don't have a DVD drive) or to upgrade from Windows Vista/Windows 7 which I had neither of.

I ended up pirating it because I couldn't figure out how to get a legitimate copy that I could actually install. :(

I haven't used Windows since XP, and 8 is really nice. I'm legitimately excited for Windows 10 especially due to all the open sourcing of .NET-related code recently.

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I would not recommend installing windows 10 on a Mac to play games at this moment, I did it using boot camp and it was horrible, poor driver support for my video card (rMBP) so I end up installing a windows 7 which gives me about 3 times more fps per game compared to w10, and about twice as fast as windows 8.1, also my mouse seems lagging when gaming in both 8.1 and 10, works perfect on 7 thought.

Thanks for the tip. I've been playing games on Windows 8.1 without any noticeable issues, but I will keep this in mind. I'll likely not upgrade this pirated copy of Windows 8.1 to 10 (since it literally only has Steam installed), but I will buy 10 to run it in a VM for development.

You can get a digital download of the Technical Preview now - I'd do that. They've announced that Windows 10 will be free to all Technical Preview participants. That way you can upgrade to the latest version and away you go.

> They've announced that Windows 10 will be free to all Technical Preview participants

Got a source on this?

http://m.windowscentral.com/windows-insiders-will-be-able-up...

That just implies that we'll be able to install it, not keep it for free. My current evaluation copy claims it expires in October.

What's the point in that since anybody who currently has Win7/8 can get it free as well?

I suppose there's a number of people running the preview as VM on non-Windows machines?

It is free only if you have a valid Win7/8 licence.

Should I just buy a Windows 7 license to get a free upgrade to Windows 10?

Just install the technical preview and you will be able to upgrade for free. Source http://m.windowscentral.com/windows-insiders-will-be-able-up...

Great news, thanks! I apparently signed up for the Windows Insider program a few months ago. :)

I'm running the Windows 10 Technical Preview on a 2013 MacBook Air, solely for gaming. So far I've only played Halflife 2, and it's much better than under OSX. I had to force it to run windowed, rather than true full screen, because full screen had some issues. I don't notice the tiny window bar once I've started playing.

The Technical Preview is free and easy to setup with Bootcamp, so you may as well give it a shot.

Try adding "-noborder" to your launch options. (Right click on the game in your steam library > Properties > Set launch options...)

see https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Command_Line_Option... for more options (I recommend "-novid -window -noborder -high -threads <number of threads that your processor supports>")

Cool - thank you!

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