I Fell Through A Microsoft Trap Door

[crashnburn4u]

That's life... Yet you could just restore your system from your system backups and pay no money. Anyway I don't believe that Microsoft is waiting to make money from people who haven't used it's activation keys for two years, it just happened.  At least we know now that these keys expire sooner or later if they are not used (it would be good to know the exact time needed for this to happen).

 

What kind of KEYS do EXPIRE? Please share. I have a Win 8 key I bought for 14.99 when the Upgrade option was out for short time. Havent used it yet, and dont plan to until I get new machine. Should I use it on some machine and then transfer later? 

[jaclaz]

 

What kind of KEYS do EXPIRE? Please share. I have a Win 8 key I bought for 14.99 when the Upgrade option was out for short time. Havent used it yet, and dont plan to until I get new machine. Should I use it on some machine and then transfer later? 

 

Aren't you  "gold partners for decades"?

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/172462-migrating-windows-7-or-8-install-from-bios-machine-to-native-boot-vhd/?p=1084106

 

You may be able to use your contacts at MS and ask them about that OS key, the one NoelC fell for is (was) a temporary promotional offer for Media Center given away for free, not for the "whole OS" in "upgrade" version at 14.99 unstead of 39.99..

 

However:

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/41771-has-it-for-sure-been-verified-the-upgrade-keys-will-not-expire

 

jaclaz

[Aloha]

I got an email reminding to use the free key before it expired on Jan 31, 2013.

I added WMC pack to Windows the day I had the key, but removed it a few weeks later.

[crashnburn4u]

 

 

What kind of KEYS do EXPIRE? Please share. I have a Win 8 key I bought for 14.99 when the Upgrade option was out for short time. Havent used it yet, and dont plan to until I get new machine. Should I use it on some machine and then transfer later? 

 

Aren't you  "gold partners for decades"?

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/172462-migrating-windows-7-or-8-install-from-bios-machine-to-native-boot-vhd/?p=1084106

 

You may be able to use your contacts at MS and ask them about that OS key, the one NoelC fell for is (was) a temporary promotional offer for Media Center given away for free, not for the "whole OS" in "upgrade" version at 14.99 unstead of 39.99..

 

However:

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/41771-has-it-for-sure-been-verified-the-upgrade-keys-will-not-expire

 

jaclaz

 

jacazz - Yes. But with great power comes, great responsibility. Asking here for things I cant or don't wish to bug them about. 

[jaclaz]

 Yes. But with great power comes, great responsibility.  Asking here for things I cant or don't wish to bug them about. 

 

In other words, you come here asking for trifling things, questions that would otherwise bug your "gold" partners.

 

Good to know you consider us buggable.

 

jaclaz

[aphelion]

Yeah as others said I'd have just posted on the forum instead of calling India, generally we're more likely to be able to help. 

 

I'm a Gold + Cloud Partner and have an MSDN Ultimate subscription and don't mind sharing to help a fellow in need.

 

Edit: I don't even bother calling MS anymore, my last time was the deal breaker. I called about an Office E3 Developer subscription and they kept bouncing me back between Partner -> MSDN -> Office -> MSDN. For 2 weeks I waited (it was a really simple, simple thing that Azure had done for me before in a day) and I told them to forget it. They said they'd consider it a complaint and log it. I'm sure they're still on it. And that was with "priority" support out of Bellevue.

Edited November 28, 2014 by aphelion

[NoelC]

Live and learn.  I figured for technical things I can't figure out I can ask for help, but for licensing things that's naturally got to be the manufacturer.

 

It cost me more than it should have, but I have to say it's been working perfectly.

 

-Noel

[crashnburn4u]

On 8/21/2014 at 3:23 PM, jaclaz said:

In other words, you come here asking for trifling things, questions that would otherwise bug your "gold" partners.

Good to know you consider us buggable.

jaclaz

I find its easier to tap the forums for information that is common to all. I love helping and getting help that way. So, given the Win 10 upgrade deadline is coming up, I have to check this again. 

[crashnburn4u]

On 11/29/2014 at 2:13 AM, aphelion said:

Yeah as others said I'd have just posted on the forum instead of calling India, generally we're more likely to be able to help. 

I'm a Gold + Cloud Partner and have an MSDN Ultimate subscription and don't mind sharing to help a fellow in need.

Edit: I don't even bother calling MS anymore, my last time was the deal breaker. I called about an Office E3 Developer subscription and they kept bouncing me back between Partner -> MSDN -> Office -> MSDN. For 2 weeks I waited (it was a really simple, simple thing that Azure had done for me before in a day) and I told them to forget it. They said they'd consider it a complaint and log it. I'm sure they're still on it. And that was with "priority" support out of Bellevue.

On 11/29/2014 at 3:05 AM, NoelC said:

Live and learn.  I figured for technical things I can't figure out I can ask for help, but for licensing things that's naturally got to be the manufacturer.

It cost me more than it should have, but I have to say it's been working perfectly.

-Noel

If manufacturers did everything perfectly, then there would not much to discuss on the forums. Be it here or Thinkpad Forums; tons of community knowledge. 

And you want to see how CLEAR are things from Microsoft.. See the number of Win 10 licensing related threads on forums; .e.g. Spiceworks and here. 

[NoelC]

For what it's worth I'm still running Win 8.1 MCE and have had no problems.  That 99 bucks didn't hurt me any.

Win 8.1 has been the best Windows OS I have ever used bar none - and I use it heavily - though I am also running Win 7 Ultimate on another system that I use less interactively (but which runs 24/7) and it gives me no problems either, whatsoever.

Regarding the Win 10 "upgrade"...  Not even for free as it removes value for me.  And my computer's good enough to run probably another 5 years.

If they ever do add enough value to Windows 10 to make it attractive to me I'll consider purchasing it.  However, I really don't anticipate that happening and so I haven't/won't go to any lengths to lock in a free license.

-Noel

[jaclaz]

9 hours ago, NoelC said:

Win 8.1 has been the best Windows OS I have ever used bar none - and I use it heavily - though I am also running Win 7 Ultimate on another system that I use less interactively (but which runs 24/7) and it gives me no problems either, whatsoever.

I will have to repeat the needed disambiguation for the casual onlooker.

What NoelC finds "the best Windows OS" is NOT "Windows 8.1", it is Windows 8.1 BUT ONLY after having been accurately tweaked and tuned, with a number of third party add ons (related to GUI/Shell) and numberless tweaks implemented by himself, i.e. basically completely unlike what the "average user" receives from MS.

See more details here (and following):
 

And here:
 

jaclaz

 

 

[NoelC]

Thanks for clarifiying that for everyone, jaclaz, though I wonder why you seem to feel such a strong need to do so again and again.  I can't quite tell if you're embarrassed for me or trying to protect the world from thinking Windows 8 could possibly be any good for anyone but me or what. 

In any case, as I have it set up it does just what I need day in and day out reliably, quickly, and looks good doing it.  That's the advantage of an OS that isn't replaced for years at a time - you can get good at setting it up and using it.  That's acknowledging a lot of what makes MSFN great.

To be fair, none of the OSs as delivered by MS were ideal out of the box.  XP wasn't bad, but pretty austere and not quite over Microsoft's humble beginnings where everything wasn't 100% perfect and needed rebooting every now and then.  For UI richness Vista probably got closer than any other and it really matured the move to 64 bit.  7 was a nice refinement (kind of a Vista.5), with a few regressions, but even more usability in many ways, and - importantly - serious and very business-oriented.  

7 was probably the end of the line for systems that were good for doing what users need without much effort, though.  Win 8 both refined the kernel a little BUT ALSO started down the road to frivolity with Apps (none of which I allow on my 8.1 system).  But 8.1 still has it where it matters under the hood and with some plastic surgery can be made into a very good desktop system on a real computer.  Now it's mature - and to me mature is anything but boring.

I always judge what Windows can be turned into and they've finally broken the tweakability of 10 more than anything else by changing policy to not leave it alone for a few years.  They've made it impossible to keep it tweaked and I just don't see a whole lot of benefit in being constantly cloud-connected.  I certainly don't want my private information taken from my disk by the OS maker.

Thing is, Microsoft almost accomplished critical mass... 

If only they would stretch their timescales out to, say, 3x to 4x what they are then I believe Win 10 could become palatable...  For example, I actually have tweaked and augmented both Win 10 builds 10240 and 10586 to the point where they were stable and pretty much usable.  It took 4 to 5 months to do that after release - hell, they were/are even private online.  But boom, then they just go and release an all new OS that breaks those tweaks.  They're about to do it again.  Sure, they DO offer a 3 month delay in the Windows Update process, but it's not quite enough.  Maybe 6 months would be enough, with a 1 year new version schedule.  Sure, I could delay the update further myself, but tell me why I should have to fight against Microsoft to do what I can already do without nearly so much of a fight?  And hey, maybe the LTSB would be my cup o tea, but I just can't license the Enterprise code without a serious wasted expenditure.

Anecdotes...

1.  I have on a number of recent occasions - being a geek of very many decades - thought to myself, "gee, this is finally the system I always dreamed of having".

2.  A very good friend of mine, a literal genius with more experience than I have and with whom I collaborate on software projects, used Windows 7 for years.  I bought him the Win 7 Ultimate retail box back in 2009, actually. 

He runs Windows in a VMware Fusion virtual machine on his iMac to do Windows development.  I could never get him to move up to 8.1 because he doesn't have the patience I do for tweaking and augmenting and polishing an OS.  He's even more about using it to get things done than I am.

Not long ago he upgraded (a copy of) his 7 VM to Win 10.  I helped him with the setup and we got everything working.

Then he promptly dropped back to using his Win 7 VM, and that's where he does his work today.  Chalk up another brilliant mind refusing to use Windows 10.

-Noel

Edited June 29, 2016 by NoelC

[jaclaz]

9 hours ago, NoelC said:

Thanks for clarifiying that for everyone, jaclaz, though I wonder why you seem to feel such a strong need to do so again and again.  I can't quite tell if you're embarrassed for me or trying to protect the world from thinking Windows 8 could possibly be any good for anyone but me or what.

Actually both.

Without knowing you, your statement seems like a full endorsement of "stock" Windows 8.1:
 

20 hours ago, NoelC said:

For what it's worth I'm still running Win 8.1 MCE and have had no problems.  That 99 bucks didn't hurt me any.

Win 8.1 has been the best Windows OS I have ever used bar none - and I use it heavily - though I am also running Win 7 Ultimate on another system that I use less interactively (but which runs 24/7) and it gives me no problems either, whatsoever.

we know that it is not the case.

Without context this could provoke two kind of reactions:

1. people may think that you are one among the blindfolded MS fanboys (and thus I am protecting you from this possible mis-characterization)

2. people may think that your enthusiastic endorsement, since it comes from an experienced user is accurate and reliable and might decide to follow it (but without the tweaks/addons/fine-tuning) and they will find themselves with an awful looking, much less productive that a "stock" Windows 7 OS. (thus I am protecting them)

Once they know that with some work 8.1 can be turned into a more than decent OS, comparable with Windows 7 (with which presumably they are already familiar), they will be correctly informed.

jaclaz
 

[NoelC]

I have to say that it feels a bit awkward that you seem to feel an ongoing need to protect the rest of the world from my Windows advice.

You may not be giving people around here enough credit.  This site is all about turning Windows into something better.  I'm certainly not the only one who knows how to tweak settings and augment an operating system with decent 3rd party tools.  I'll wager most here do it.  Nor am I the only one who likes Win 8.1 (@GreenHillManiac and @JodyT come to mind).

I've learned some of and published most of what I know how to do right here on this very forum, such as this and this and this and even this.  Thing is, much of it isn't specific to Windows 8.1.  As you have already noted, it is my opinion that all Windows OSs need a fair bit of work to be useful and stable.  Windows 7 needs almost as much tweaking, though the desktop looks better out of the box.

-Noel

[jaclaz]

4 hours ago, NoelC said:

I have to say that it feels a bit awkward that you seem to feel an ongoing need to protect the rest of the world from my Windows advice.

You may not be giving people around here enough credit.  This site is all about turning Windows into something better.  I'm certainly not the only one who knows how to tweak settings and augment an operating system with decent 3rd party tools.

I am not protecting the world from your windows advice.

I am protecting your windows advice from the risk of being misunderstood by the rest of the world.

And sure you are not the only one, there are quite a few members that shared nice tweaks for the one or the other OS in order to make it better.

Your statement taken without being familiar with the forum and your (and other members' and non members') contributions is what actually sounds not giving yourself (and the other members) enough credit (like none at all), while my nitpicking at least provided links to a (partial) list of the work by you (and other people) that made your OS so good.

 

jaclaz

Edited June 29, 2016 by jaclaz