6 ms·

Wouldn't the license cost more than the hardware? The site where they are sourcing the Windows ISO from seems sketchy, but apparently is legit...? [1] [2] I g

• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• MagicPropmaker 8y ago
  > Wouldn't the license cost more than the hardware? That's an odd argument. Software has to cost less than the hardware that runs it? When you can get computers for $35 or less, that doesn't leave much of a margin.
  • michaelmrose 8y ago
    The user ought to be interested in a term Microsoft has loved in the past. Total cost of ownership. If a user is looking at paying $35 for hardware + $119 for software and doesn't have a desire to pay for real support, as opposed to the imaginary support you get as an oem pc buyer, and we aren't interested in calculating the cost of power and net connectivity etc then the TCO is $154. For $154 you can get a lot more computer with linux. The implication is that for cheap hardware only very cheap software is competitive because people willing to pay that much money would be better spending it on a better computer. The unit cost of duplicating software is so close to zero that it might as well be zero and people are willing to give away great software so selling it becomes a challenge.
    • technofiend 8y ago
      >For $154 you can get a lot more computer with linux. Although I totally agree with you for that price you can get also get far more computer with Windows! Refurbished Intel machines with a windows 10 home license can be had all day long for $89+.
      • michaelmrose 8y ago
        If you want a relatively expensive to run space heater slower than the rasberry pi with a 6 year old hard drive which will eat all data not backed up within 1 year. Also note that some of what you backed up will probably be silently corrupted.
        • tasty_freeze 8y ago
          You missed the opportunity to spell Microsoft with a "$". Seriously, you are quoting 90's tribal chants. I'm sitting in front of an 8 year old PC with a quad core, 2.4GHz intel cpu with 8GHz of RAM. It will run rings around any raspberry pi. I use linux machines for work all day long and my home pc for all my personal use. I had one hard drive die a couple years back, but that has nothing to do with the OS. That is all the data loss I've had in 25 years of using PCs. No viruses, and BSOD's are a distant memory (BTW, the linux machines at work crash sometimes too).
          • a1369209993 8y ago
            And you're willing to sell that computer for 89-154 USD?
            • mcbits 8y ago
              There are (heavily used) PCs with those specs in that price range on eBay, but they'd be pretty hard to mount on a quadcopter or whatever.
            • AnimalMuppet 8y ago
              Maybe tasty_freeze isn't. (Maybe technofiend isn't, either.) But if technofiend is right, then somebody is. That somebody doesn't need to be tasty_freeze. And tasty_freeze isn't the one who made the $89-154 claim. tasty_freeze's claim is that 8-year-old machines work fine, and don't lose data (much).
  • bdcravens 8y ago
    SQL Server Enterprise costs about $7000 per core, and Adobe Creative Suite (pre-subscription model) was $2600, both oft run on computers that cost less. And those aren't even that expensive overall.
• withinrafael 8y ago
  It's effectively emulating a Windows Update client to retrieve all the update bits. Then there's some hoop jumps to bake an ISO. It's also important to point out Insider builds are free for use, with some restrictions, providing a cheap alternative. [1] [1] https://insider.windows.com/en-us/program-agreement/ https://insider.windows.com/en-us/program-agreement/
• Fredej 8y ago
  I believe Win10 license price scales roughly with processor power, so it might be fine.
  • WorldMaker 8y ago
    Also, screen size. Since ~2014 Microsoft has stated that Windows 10 is free to OEMs selling devices intended for screens smaller than 9 inches. Which gets to the complicated part of the question in that this is the licensing for OEMs. Running Windows 10 on an RPi as a "consumer" that isn't an OEM (and isn't building/reselling devices) is an interesting question. Though as a consumer, Windows 10 is also weirdly "shareware" these days in that it's not entirely that mean in what features it disables (versus say XP almost not working at all) when not activated and will happily explain in the Microsoft Store how much it costs to activate and let you buy it there. (Example: https://www.windowscentral.com/you-do-not-need-activate-windows-10 https://www.windowscentral.com/you-do-not-need-activate-wind...)
• asdff 8y ago
  Are there any reasons to register windows 10, besides being able to change your desktop background? AFAIK the "this copy of windows is not genuine" message is benign.
  • colejohnson66 8y ago
    It allows access to certain features. I believe Hyper-V and a few others are locked behind a license door.
  • pexaizix 8y ago
    It is benign but a bit annoying because it overlays all windows. You can just use a "rogue" KMS server to activate Windows with no risks for you. For example, as an admin: slmgr /skms kms.digiboy.ir
• trumped 8y ago
  licenses are about 5$ on ebay
  • colejohnson66 8y ago
    Those aren’t legitimate. Please don’t suggest that here
    • wolrah 8y ago
      AFAIK the resale of software regardless of EULA restrictions has been declared legal in some European countries. They're not necessarily legit in the US, but we're not everywhere. Also even in the US, if you're a home user there's no real concern. I wouldn't run a business on resold keys but I'd certainly use them for home if I needed one.
    • martin_a 8y ago
      That' not true. Reselling volume licenses is perfectly legal in the EU.
    • trumped 8y ago
      are you the seller or how do you know? (serious question)
• voltagex_ 8y ago
  uupdump.ml is another site that does the same thing.