HOLY CRAP it's a computer apocalypse, what should I do?

[Mike Blakesley]

Thanks all .... I am not as freaked out as I was, considering how many comments here have said that older machines will still work. I did get the "free" download from the link provide above and I'll see how that works... will probably wait until after the weekend to do the theater machines in case anything goes wrong.

I am in the process of replacing the old "Vista" machine.... that thing's a clunker anyway.

[Leo Enticknap]

I also knew about one of the unofficial, free upgrade methods, and have used it on personal machines successfully. But as Microsoft's official position is that you have to pay for the license, we obviously can't do that on the PCs we supply to customers (mainly remote access PCs for us to get in via Teamviewer).

I recently saw an ad for MIcrosoft's laughably overpriced tablets, which claimed (among other things) that its low energy consumption makes it the most greenie gadget you could imagine. I found this somewhat hypocritical, given that their business model specifically encourages the sending of perfectly good PCs to the dumpster. As mentioned in my earlier post, the hardware upgrades needed to make a late '00s or early teens PC run W10 comfortably and reliably, plus the license, come to about $200. When spending the same money will get you this, is it any surprise that not many people choose to upgrade their existing computers? Most of that $200 is for the Windows 10 license. If Microsoft were to make it official that any PC that is hardware capable of running W10 and has a legitimate OEM XP, Vista or 7 license gets the new OS for free, then a lot of computers would be in service for a lot longer. The hardware in a typical decade-old desktop PC is perfectly adequate for wordprocessing, email, watching cat (or porn) videos, and everything that about 90% of desktop users need to do, and it could well be good for another 5-10 years before a major component fails. But yet Microsoft's official line that the OS upgrade has to be paid for is ensuring that millions of these PCs will go to landfill.

[Marcel Birgelen]

While it might be "unofficial", as in, it's not really advertised on Microsoft's site, you can hardly claim it's illegal. It has been published by CNET, not a small boy, for everybody there to see. If Microsoft doesn't want people to upgrade this way, it's just a small fix on their side to fix this. What you're doing is: You're downloading the original upgrade software they provided during their "free upgrade" campaign and it still just works.

Keep in mind that an OEM license is a lot cheaper than a retail license and by a lot I mean: multiple factors. From what I know it's somewhere between $10 and $25 what a system manufacturer pays for the OEM license. There are many other ways to legitimately get to a Windows 10 license as part of a volume agreement, for example. Or, you can buy an OEM license from a retailer, together with a piece of hardware, like a new SSD, which for now, still seems to be perfectly legal.

So, given the amount of money Microsoft makes, often via still very shady business tactics, the convoluted way their licensing system works and is written in a way nobody really can understand it, on purpose, I don't really feel sorry for Microsoft, if they miss a few dollars in upgrade dollars by exploiting a workaround they explicitly didn't close and in any way I can interpret it, isn't illegal to use.

[Ed Gordon]

While it might be "unofficial", as in, it's not really advertised on Microsoft's site, you can hardly claim it's illegal.

Marcel is absolutely correct. This is not a hack. You download the Window 10 software from Microsoft. You select x64 or x86 version. You will get Windows 10 Pro or Home during the install depending on what you are upgrading. If it works as it has in the past, you will have a completely legal version of Windows 10.

A friend of mine also confirms that this does work. His theory is that this Microsoft's way of extending the free upgrade to those who did not upgrade and are now stuck with an unsupported OS. If nothing else, it moves all those Window 7 users into the Windows 10 column.

Desktop OS Market Share

Windows 10 47.65%
Windows 7 32.74%
Mac OS X 10.14 5.21%
Windows 8.1 4.09%
Windows XP 2.03%
Mac OS X 10.13 1.97%
Linux 1.41%
Mac OS X 10.12 0.89%
Mac OS X 10.15 0.83%
Windows 8 0.69%

[Steve Guttag]

Marcel, whereas I build computers as part of our service/support, I get the OEM version and they are not as cheap as you say. Now, if you have a micro PC, there is a very cheap license for systems with under 64GB of storage but I'm unaware of any $10-$25 full licenses.

[Marcel Birgelen]

The prices I quoted are the prices what I've heard, those big-box system integrators pay for their licenses. Those deals are usually under NDA, but sometimes some details leak, e.g. as part of lawsuits.

As a small shop, you will obviously not get that kind of pricing. But our prices aren't too far off, I think we currently pay something like EUR 35 excluding VAT for OEM licenses of Win10Pro from one of the bigger hardware and software distributors out there. There are some on-line resellers selling them for less, but I'm always wary of the sources they use.

I've seen extremely fluctuating prices in several markets, so maybe the list-price for an OEM license in the U.S. is far higher than here in Europe? I know MS tends to lower the prices, depending on the amount of piracy going on in each market. Never expect anyone in China to pay the equivalent of $200 for a copy of Windows...

We used to do volume licensing on Workstations but that's now all been reduced to Windows OEM and Office 365, we only use volume licensing on servers nowadays. So, I don't have any current pricing for volume licenses of Win10Pro.

[Scott Norwood]

I'm guessing that the Windows OEM license price has to do with volume, though. I'm sure that HP and Dell pay less that Steve's company for OEM Windows licenses just based upon volume. The OEM licenses come with some restrictions on moving them to different machines (which, basically, can't be done legally), and running as VMs.

The most interesting point in this thread (to me) is the one about credit cards and PCI compliance. I don't really know much about this, but it probably does preclude the use of unsupported software, at least if it is connected to the Internet. It's worth a look, anyway. My understanding is that most "cash-register-like" devices that run Windows use the embedded version (which has a longer support cycle); maybe that is one of the reasons for this.

Regarding "boot times": Windows has fudged this for years. The GUI login screen is designed to appear long before the OS has actually completed booting (i.e. all services have started).

[Marcel Birgelen]

The most interesting point in this thread (to me) is the one about credit cards and PCI compliance. I don't really know much about this, but it probably does preclude the use of unsupported software, at least if it is connected to the Internet. It's worth a look, anyway. My understanding is that most "cash-register-like" devices that run Windows use the embedded version (which has a longer support cycle); maybe that is one of the reasons for this.

PoS systems are often a Pain-in-the-Ass, all too often, suppliers go out of business or companies end certain products targeted at niche markets, leaving their users struggling with a non-existent upgrade path.

Essentially, any machine running non-supported software can never be PCI compliant and if that system processes credit card or other payment card data and that system is responsible for abuse of the system, stuff can become extremely expensive, for the operator of that system.

Not all PoS systems process credit card and other payment data directly though, many modern payment terminals are smarter than that and keep sensitive data like credit card numbers for themselves and don't share them with the host machine. The host machine just requests a transaction and receives a summary of the end-result. In this case, you could, on paper, still be PCI compliant, even if the OS on your PoS isn't officially supported anymore.

[Steve Guttag]

I have ZERO doubt that what the likes of Dell, HP or any of the computer companies pay for their OEM stuff is dramatically different than what we pay. We don't do anything resembling high-volume (or even low-volume). I was just noting that what we source is OEM versions of the software from above-board distributor.

I'm curious as the order codes you (or others) are using to source the low-cost OEM software. I also have zero doubt that prices will be regional (as will the software itself, potentially) based on country.

[Mike Blakesley]

Update: Using the "You can still upgrade for free" link from page 1, I have been able to upgrade most of my computers -- even the concession-stand one which is a 2012 vintage -- to Win10. All are running fine, the only hiccup (so far) was I had to reinstall an HP laser printer that I use in the theatre office. (And HP's "problem solving" website was completely useless.... I needed to download the install software and start as if I'd just unboxed the printer. But it's working now.) My home machine is upgrading as I type this. I have one other (older) machine at home that I probably won't do anything with, I'll just unplug it from the internet.

The only other machine I haven't done anything to is the "Vista" one that is connected to the projection booth, but my computer guy is looking for a low-cost Win10 solution for that one.

As for our Carquest computers... they don't process credit cards, but they are connected to CQ through a company intranet and a VPN on site. They're all covered via our monthly computer fee, so we pretty much do what they say when it comes to upgrading or changing anything on them. I do wonder what you get if you buy a new computer through them though... I wonder if they're still shipping Win7 on new machines? The Carquest computers are HP machines, they've been in bed with HP for many years. They've been pretty trouble free, I must admit. (knocking on wood). All of my others are Dells.

[Justin d'Entremont]

Here's my two cents:

• Windows 7 is a ticking time-bomb at this point
• Any Windows 7 license key appears to still be valid to activate Windows 10 if you're doing a fresh install (Eg. the stickers on the case of your computer will work fine).
• The program to make a Windows 10 installation USB stick can be had for free on their website (https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/soft...load/windows10)
• If your computer doesn't have an SSD in it, spend the $100 to upgrade to one. It's the perfect time to.
• I refuse to buy a new computer in the same way I refuse to buy a new car. They loose like 50% of their value in the first year or two, but as everyone here seems to know, they work just fine a decade later. On that note, I buy all of my machines (50+ over the last 3-4 years) from a company out of the Toronto area called Bauer Systems (http://www.bauersystems.com/). They sell used (what appear to be off-lease) business computers in 10/10 condition at rock bottom prices. Not sure if they ship to the US, but if you're in Canada you can pick up a beautiful computer that is two years old, which for most peoples needs is as fast as anything new, for like $200.
  • Eg: DELL OPTIPLEX USFF 9020 Core i5-4570S 8Gb Ram, 500 Gb HDD, DVD-RW Drive, $185

[Leo Enticknap]

Agreed completely, except that the ticking time bomb can be partially defused by the combination of a big iron hardware firewall on your gateway, and not letting regular users have administrator access. If your organization has to run software or hardware drivers that can't be made to work reliably under W10, I suppose that's an interim solution.

But, given all the greenie propaganda that we are now constantly subjected to, I'm surprised that more attention has not been given to upgrading and recycling PC hardware, rather than simply replacing it. Unless you're doing something processor intensive (e.g. games or video rendering), and assuming that it was manufactured post-capacitor plague, most older PCs will work perfectly well with the new OS. I guess the underlying issue is that the labor to refurb is a significant cost in itself, which can exceed that of buying new hardware in many situations.

[Mike Blakesley]

Update: Everything's working fine on my 'converted' machines, except on one of them which I use "Excel," one of my macros does not work. It pops up an error message "procedure too large." The workbook is a 32-page sheet that covers a whole month; the macro in question "clears" about 20 dollar amounts out of each of the pages in preparation for the next month, so it IS a long macro. The help message says that the macro is larger than 64k but has to be smaller than that to work.... why is this happening in W10 when it didn't happen in 7? I'm using the same version of Excel in both.

I figured as a workaround I could just save a "blank" version of the spreadsheet and then start fresh from that every month, but I'm just curious why the freaking macro won't work now.

[Steve Guttag]

I can confirm that the link on CNET for a free download of Win10 upgrade (from Win 7 or 8) still works. I just updated my virtual machines (Mac running parallels). No overt problems at all. Parallels, after the update, updated its toolset so the integration remains seamless.

I have MS Office native on the Mac so I cannot speak to Mike's comments above. I will say that if you are on Excel 2010 or earlier you can run into problems. Office 2013 is starting to be a minimum, I'm finding. Dolby's DARDT spreadsheet uses functions that are only found in Excel 2013 and later.

[Mike Blakesley]

That could be my issue -- I think I have Office 2007. What's weird is, the spreadsheet works fine on the old computer but hangs up on the new one.... both with the same Excel version. The oly difference is the operating system. But yeah, I should upgrade Office on my work computer for sure.