When I purchased my new computer a little over a year ago, I wanted to get Widows 8 Professional, but was told that I couldn't buy it outright, I could only lease it.
Now I see Windows 10 Professional FOR SALE! Will I buy it? I don't know -BUT - If Windows 8 Professional had been on my computer, my free upgrade would have been to Windows 10 Professional, so I feel a bit cheated.
Does anyone know what's going on?
Windows 8 Pro was always for sale to customers. You could have bought it. Unsure why you would have been told that.
Maybe you were misinformed . You can't own windows but rather pay to use it with a license and that's what you're paying a license fees to use windows . So when you buy a copy of windows whether its windows xp or 7 or 8 or even 10 you get a software copy with a license to use it . Though you could of bought a copy of windows 8 pro software ( License )
Do you still have a Windows 8 Pro product key? I have a product key that allows me to upgrade Windows 8 Home to Pro. So what I had to do was install Windows 8 Home. Upgrade that Pro using the product key I have. Then do an in place upgrade to Windows 10 Pro. That gave me the digital entitlement for Windows 10 Pro which I could then re-install whenever I wanted.
As NavyLCDR wrote, If you have a Windows 8 key, you can use it to activate Windows 10 for free.
If you have Windows 8 installed already, you can upgrade to Windows 10 for free.
If you do not have Win8 installed and do not have a key, then there is no way around it - you'll have to buy Windows 10.
(it is not actually free officially, they just "choose to offer it for free" to select customers who have previous Windows).
I'm curious to know who told you that Windows 8 was only available to lease. I wouldn't do business with that person anymore.
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