Windows 10: Microsoft releases new license terms for Windows 10: Biggest surprise?

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:)

 

Windows 10: Biggest surprise? No gotchas!

Hi,

This is an Excellent read it should answer most if not All your questions.

Sorry, conspiracy theorists: The new documents are simple and straightforward, with absolutely no gotchas.

Microsoft releases new license terms for Windows 10: Biggest surprise?
No gotchas

 

Will we have to pay for updates with Windows 10?

According to Ed Bott
(a normally reliable source) on ZDNet this morning, the new Windows 10 EULA(s) have no surprises and only a few innocuous changes in wording. There is no indication of paid subscriptions in the offing.

 

*Sad I'm disappointed!................. j/k *Biggrin I'm actually glad that MS is finally letting us know this information.

 

That is a little confusing though. I thought Microsoft Office was more geared to business then the home user. I could see some issues with that.

 

Groze, those are the three mobile apps that come with Windows 10, not the Office Desktop Suite.

There have always been several versions of Office, which include Student, Standard, Professional, Professional Plus are just some of the different versions that have been available down through the years. Recently, Student and Standard have been combined to become Home and Student.

Office 365 2016 for non-business use includes Home, Personal and Home and Student. There are three versions for business use which include Business Essentials, Business and Business Premium.

 

Well at least that puts to rest the question of whether Windows 10 license will be transferable to another device if upgrading from a retail version o 7 or 8.

 

Yeah, I read the license carefully when upgrading, and it puts a number of things to bed.

1) If you upgrade a retail copy of Windows 7/8.x it remains a retail license, and is transferable.

2) You have full downgrade rights, and you are free to go back to the original version you bough.

3) They've done away with all the "OEM" and what not terms, and now they just say "If your software was pre-installed on the device" or "If you acquired the software from a retailer" (and they make it clear that if you get it from Microsoft directly, such as with MSDN or TechNet, Microsoft is considered the retailer).

4) As expected, you can't dual boot the same license with different versions (or run a virtual machine with the same license). If you are going to dual boot, you legally need 2 separate licenses.

 

I am happy with these terms. No surprises!

 

I follow the spirit of the terms but have a little difficulty with 4.
Take the following scenario:-
Assume windows 7 as starting point.
Clone 7 drive - upgrade to 10.
Install both 7 and 10 drives with dual boot with bios on the same machine.
Statement 2 says I am free to return to 7 therefore I boot 7
next time I boot 10 for file transfer etc.
I can see how they can check for standard dual boot systems with 2 partitions /vm but the way I have described depends on the user following the spirit of the licence.
For this reason should you wish to keep 7 use an insider version of 10
Obviously you are not allowed to use the clone or its product key as a basis for upgrading a second system.

 

So am I going to have an issue with my system?

This is all on one hard drive

Partition Primary 1 Windows 7 oem changed to windows 7 retail key (so I wouldn't have to reinstall it)
Partition Primary 2 Windows 7 oem upgraded to windows 10 preview which will become windows 10 release.
Partition Logical 5 Xubuntu
Partition Logical 6 Linux Swap

 

I take #2 in that list ["2) You have full downgrade rights, and you are free to go back to the original version you bough."} as meaning going back to Win7 w/SP1 or Win8.1 wiping out Win10 in the process, not the meaning of the ability to dual-boot. Two Operating Systems on the same hardware requires 2 licenses.

 

Correct. Legally speaking, if you are abiding by the license. Technically, it will likely work.

 

When dual-booting, the situation is that you're only using one license at a time--so if you boot into Win7 you aren't running Win10; if you boot into Win10 you aren't running Win7, etc. I see that as similar to the retail licensing for Windows 7/8--buy the retail license you get the 32-bit & 64-bit versions, both, but only one at a time is licensed for use. Both versions are licensed, but may not be run concurrently. Not really sure how the authorization servers might deal with that, though...*Wink

At any rate, unless you're having some kind of Win10 driver-related problems, I see no reason it cannot immediately become your primary OS, rendering dual-booting just an unnecessary headache with no advantages that I can think of. Even if you start out dual-booting you'll soon find yourself spending all of your time on Win10, anyway--and then it's just a simple matter of bypassing the bootmenu and booting straight into Win10 and making use of that partition disk space...A good use for it is as a backup for your Win10 partition...That's what I did when I decided Win10 was stable enough, a few builds back...

 

Sounds good to me Groze, as long as you can keep your head on straight with all those boot options. *Smile