and in addition, @cereberus, there was also the announcement they would continue the free upgrade for assistive technology users. Think of what they would have had to do to code the activation servers to accept only those requests for new digital licenses and reject all others. Seems like it would save them a whole lot of money to just leave the activation servers on the way they were and put up a "smokescreen" website.
Yup, DE is still available as free upgrade - MS has never been consistent vis-a-vis PR and implementation...I can't see a major corp. overlooking something like this without some measure of intent.
Tested with a new VM and unused Win 7 Retail key.
For what it's worth, add me to the list of those who can confirm. I did a clean install on a friend's laptop last night who's hard drive died. It was with a brand new blank drive, and the laptop never ran anything other then the Windows 7 Home it shipped with. After install, I typed in the OEM key on the laptop itself, and it activated. Several reboots later, it is still showing as activated.
Hi there
It's STILL working today (Aug 03 Isl time 19.23) -- using old TechNet keys. I don't know for OEM stuff.
I suspect this will be rectified shortly as soon as Ms has got the mega amount of downloaders of Windows build 1607 out of the way.
Cheers
jimbo
Well, getting ready to see if it still works tonight after work. I'm getting my new stick computer tonight and will be trying to activate a new upgrade to Windows 10 Pro on it. I'm going to really bite the bullet hard and install a Windows 8.1 Pro on it and attempt to upgrade 8.1 to 10.
Getting well aired now. Paul Thurrott is one of the better journalists around.
You Can Still Use a Windows 7/8.x Product Key to Activate Windows 10 - Thurrott.com
Also respected Mary Jo Foley :-
Windows 10 free upgrade is still available using Windows 7 and 8 product keys | ZDNet
Here is her take which echoes my belief:
"My guess is it just might take Microsoft some time to phase out availability of the free Windows 10 bits, the same way company officials said it likely would take some time for them to phase out the Get Windows 10 app and prompts. Or maybe Microsoft execs decided to make the phase out more gradual than they said publicly in case there was a big backlash (in spite of the many notices and prompts alerting users of the pending end of the free update offer.)"
I agree with him in this:
... and:Note: Please understand that the loophole that allows this to work could (and should, I think) close at any time: All Microsoft has to do is to is turn it off from the cloud, it wouldn’t even require an update to Windows 10.
As is always the case with Microsoft, however, a little communication would be nice. I’d really like to see the firm explain why this works and when—or if—it will stop doing so.
