Microsoft takes back its Windows 10 free promise, says will only provide Windows 10 final release build without updates
On Friday, Microsoft had announced a way for to get a genuine Windows 10 enabled free of cost and updated forever. However, the company has done a turn around and retracted from this promise.
Microsoft stealthily made changes to the Windows Insider preview program blogpost and the reference to “remain activated” has since been removed. It had mentioned earlier that members who have signed up for the Insider Program running a preview version would “receive the Windows 10 final release build and remain activated.” However, now it only says that they will “receive the Windows 10 final release build.” The word ‘activation’ has been removed.
The company has also added a “clarifying” sentence: “It’s important to note that only people running Genuine Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 can upgrade to Windows 10 as part of the free upgrade offer.” This is strikingly different to what the company said on Friday, when Gabe Aul of Microsoft asserted that upgraded preview copies would be genuine.
All this is very confusing. The most important thing is that no clear communication regarding the licensing from Microsoft is expected to be heard any time soon. One doesn’t expect there to be any major technical difference. As mentioned in the past, Windows 10 installed via the preview will enable and show as genuine. It should be fully working (no “non-genuine” watermark on the desktop or anything like that), and importantly look identical from any other Windows 10 installation.
However, the arrangement has changed. This method of getting Windows 10 had a disguise of officialness to it on Friday. It was an absolutely recorded way of getting Windows 10 that was genuine and enabled for free. Well, that’s not the case anymore. This does not imply that it would not work, but it would mean that it is no longer entirely legitimate and officially approved.
The hobbyists and other home users really don’t care about this, as they just want a free Windows for their self-built PC; that few million users will be able to secretly get a free copy of Windows 10. However, it does matter to organizations, corporations and groups who may likely to be subjected to a software audit. Well, they cannot tell Microsoft “Oh yeah, we got Genuine copies of Windows by upgrading from the preview.” And that is what Microsoft really is concerned about.
