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Business as usual for Microsoft. There must be something about their business model I'm not getting. Going to microsoft.com with the intent of buying Windows
by bborud 11y ago
Business as usual for Microsoft.
There must be something about their business model I'm not getting. Going to microsoft.com with the intent of buying Windows to install it on a naked PC or in a VM on OSX, I have yet to identify an option that allows me to: 1) buy a license, 2) download an ISO image.
The closest solution I've seen is to download some exe file that presupposes that I have Windows installed somewhere so I can....do god knows what to get an install going.
I know what I came to the site for. Instead the site spends all its energy on selling me on the idea of Windows and then fails to sell me the product.
Consistently.
For years.
Why? Do they not want my business? Is it really so horrible to sell their product to someone who wants to run their OS under VMWare?
This is neither hyperbole nor gratuitous negativism, but Microsoft is perhaps the worst company to buy a product from online. Microsoft fixing this is the litmus test for when they might, and I would like to emphasize might, be able to stop sucking.
- christoph 11y agoI suffered this with a 2nd hand Windows 7 computer my mother was using that kept complaining about being counterfeit. Windows is only £80 or so and there was a big button on the nag screens that took me to the Windows site to buy a licence. Great - credit card in hand I clicked on through and was instantly greeted with buy Windows 8.1 screens. The problem is, I absolutely did not want under any circumstances to install 8.1. I just wanted a legit licence to the already installed 7, which the computer was quite happily running and required no learning/explaining of metro to my mother. For nearly 1 hour I tried to find a way to buy that Windows 7 licence key and found absolutely no way to do it.
- nadams 11y ago> I suffered this with a 2nd hand Windows 7 computer my mother was using that kept complaining about being counterfeit. That has been known to happen [1] (it's never happened to me personally). I suspect it has something to do with buggy AV or anti-malware software. > For nearly 1 hour I tried to find a way to buy that Windows 7 licence key and found absolutely no way to do it. You don't have a Best Buy type store near you? [1] http://www.infoworld.com/article/2859267/operating-systems/windows-7-hit-by-rash-of-bogus-not-genuine-reports-validation-code-0x8004fe21.html http://www.infoworld.com/article/2859267/operating-systems/w...
- nadams 11y ago> The closest solution I've seen is to download some exe file that presupposes that I have Windows installed somewhere so I can... My guess they did that because it's probably just like BartPE or other PE products - it copies files from the underlying OS. > Is it really so horrible to sell their product to someone who wants to run their OS under VMWare? There is nothing stopping you from running Windows in a VM - millions of people do it all over the world.
- Kurtz79 11y ago"Why? Do they not want my business? Is it really so horrible to sell their product to someone who wants to run their OS under VMWare?" Not really, they want the business of IT departments of medium/large companies, running full Windows stacks (Windows Enterprise, Office, Windows Server, MS Sql Server, Exchange), which buy licenses by the dozen (at least) through their purchasing department. It's how they make(a lot of) money.
- MarkSweep 11y agoThe is a link in the top right hand corner to the Microsoft Store, where you can buy Windows. When I bought Win7, I could download an ISO.