undefined | Better HN

0 pointsguygurari13y ago0 comments

If that were true, then I would have also expected them to ease up on the anti-piracy measures.

0 comments

They did. By lowering the price. I used to have 2 PC's running pirated copies of windows. Not anymore, they are both running Windows 8 I purchased at a reasonable price of 39.99.

guygurariOP13y ago

As far as I know that is an upgrade price, which you can only get if you already own a legitimate copy of a previous version.

kyriakos13y ago

I do have Windows Vista OEM licenses which give me the right to upgrade to 8, just no windows 7 licenses which i used to run 'illegally'.

But I believe Microsoft knows what they are doing, cause the upgrade assistance does not check if you are running a legit version. It either means they were too trusting that users will be running legit versions before upgrading or it means that they deliberately left this hole in order to get a revenue from users who would otherwise just install a pirated version of their new OS.

chc13y ago

The non-upgrade price is lower too unless I badly misremember how much Windows 7 went for.

chc13y ago

It seems to be really hard for any big company to be "OK" with piracy, even if that company wants to get its software in as many hands as possible. They simply crave control. This is even somewhat reasonable, as pirate versions may be unreliable in ways that the official version isn't, thus giving a bad impression of your software. They would rather just sell the official version dirt cheap.

illuminate13y ago

"I would have also expected them to ease up on the anti-piracy measures"

Are there any specific anti-piracy measures you're referring to, or just the presence of them?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

kyriakos13y ago

They did. By lowering the price. I used to have 2 PC's running pirated copies of windows. Not anymore, they are both running Windows 8 I purchased at a reasonable price of 39.99.

guygurariOP13y ago

As far as I know that is an upgrade price, which you can only get if you already own a legitimate copy of a previous version.

kyriakos13y ago

I do have Windows Vista OEM licenses which give me the right to upgrade to 8, just no windows 7 licenses which i used to run 'illegally'.

chc13y ago

The non-upgrade price is lower too unless I badly misremember how much Windows 7 went for.

chc13y ago

illuminate13y ago

"I would have also expected them to ease up on the anti-piracy measures"

Are there any specific anti-piracy measures you're referring to, or just the presence of them?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse