Windows 10: Buying new Windows 10

Unless you buy from a seller that has been there longer than a week. i think the application of common sense should prevail when purchasing and due diligence performed as best as you can under the circumstance. Doesn't take much to work out who has good feedback over a number of years and such things. Besides if, as you are alluding to, they were counterfeit surely Microsoft and Kaspersky wouldn't have activated them when the said key was input? Perhaps they wouldn't have issued me with a user account on their website for the past 3 months from where I can edit info and perform various other tasks.

Cheers.

 

Do people really think they can buy something at 80% off ... from China ... and believe that it's legitimate?

This is not a department store selling off the summer fashions real cheap to make room for the fall lineup.
It's not Wal Mart clearing out the unsold gift wrap the day after Christmas.
This is not stale day-old bread at the grocery store selling for cheap.

This is about selling Windows. It's not seasonal. It's not perishable. It's not subject to discounts.
If you find it cheap then you've found a counterfeit.

 

I prefer to buy cheap Windows 7 keys from Amazon UK noting the review comments. I've then upgraded the installation to Windows 10 which was still working last week. All keys are still working after a few months and Windows 10 shows activated with a digital licence. I'll claim a refund from Amazon under UK consumer law if the keys stop working since they were advertised as genuine MS keys.

 

Here are the real prices for W10 if you had to buy it.

Windows 7, 8 and 10 Home and Professional - Newegg.com

 

With previous OSs, such dodgy keys often got deactivated. However MS have totally muddied the water with digital licences.

As far as we know, the digital licence does not hold any information about the key that was used to obtain it, and also a digital licence cannot be deactivated (only transferred).

So in practice, if you buy a cheap key,and it works just once for you to get a digital licence, it really does not matter if the actual key later gets blocked.

Of course, there is always the risk the key never works, so in the end "caveat emptor" always applies.

Frankly, I do not think MS really care that much as they are only interested in getting people into the Windows 10 ecosphere. They tried to give away 1 billion free upgrades and only achieved half of that. The number of people buying these dodgy keys is a drop in the ocean compared with 500 million free upgrades that never materialised.

I certainly do not advocate piracy, but if a buyer buys a cheap key in good faith and it works, they cannot be guilty of piracy. In the end it is up to MS to squash such activities but in reality the cost of policing it probably far outweighs the minor revenue loss they incur by ignoring it.

 

It sounds too good to be true. When I bought my key off the Microsoft store (w10 Home x64), it cost me 138 € (euro) here in Spain.

A few months later I bought another for a newly mounted pc at work and same story, but maybe the price was 10 € less or so.