Hi – looking to try and purchase a legit but cheap (is that such a thing?) win10 licence so I can run sdruno on a Mac using VirtualBox.

Any recommendations please ?

ta

OEM pack of Windows 7 for £15 on the bay.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/p/23035056634?iid=143956249502

Windows 10 will happily accept a W7 licence key.

Will it still do that @cougar ? I thought the allowable upgrade period had expired?

Microsoft want everyone on Windows 10, they’re giving it away at every chance they have, yes the upgrade scheme still works. As I’ve literally just installed/upgraded it on a Win 8 laptop without even thinking about it.

I thought the allowable upgrade period had expired?

It’s a complicated answer but the short version is “yes”. As z1ppy suggests, MS seemingly don’t care. I can only assume that either getting rid of all the legacy shite and moving everyone onto one supported platform is more important to them than a few pennies here and there for a desktop licence, or they’ve lost interest in the consumer market when they can charge tens of thousands for a SQL licence.

More cynically, I rather suspect that few people see sufficient value in an OS to want to spend much money on it anyway, it’s something that ‘should come with the computer’. It’s probably why they’ve moved to a subs model for Office, they’ve realised that your average joe isn’t going to drop £400 to write a couple of letters and… I don’t even know what else, what do ‘normal’ people use Excel for?

But, yes, it still works and is unlikely to be going away any time soon.

Windows 10 will happily accept a W7 licence key

Will it accept a Win95 one? It’s about time I upgraded.

Superb-will give that a try – ta

what do ‘normal’ people use Excel for?

Tracking ones Lego collection and producing labels for ones garage.

Sorry, missed the normal bit.

Microsoft want everyone on Windows 10, they’re giving it away at every chance they have, yes the upgrade scheme still works. As I’ve literally just installed/upgraded it on a Win 8 laptop without even thinking about it.

How easy/quick was that? Thinking of doing the same on 8.1 but don’t wanna get bogged down messing with computers for days. W8.1 works just fine so ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it..’ etc, but the bloody metro/charms thing has been eroding my sanity for years.

Will it accept a Win95 one? It’s about time I upgraded.

I’ve got a key you can have, I’ll message you later. new pc came with an os licence, the charity taking my old pc day they don’t need my old licence key. I have to find the key first though

what do ‘normal’ people use Excel for?

Recording every time you fill up the car so you’ve got a record of the mpg you got from every tank of fuel and a running mpg average for about the last 20 or so years.

Though tbh I’ve now moved to using Sheets. I mean cloud’s the way to go, after all I’m not daft, am I?

‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it..’ etc, but the bloody metro/charms thing has been eroding my sanity for years.

So, it’s broke then?

Just do it.

@daffy yes it will. I’ve been rebuilding some PCs that my work has donated to school and activated some hardware that I’d upgraded from W7 to 10 last weekend.

I paid £3 for a license key off ebay, it works fine.

I paid £2.11 for an Office license, but it came as a hexadecimal garbage username and password. It’s fine in terms of it works, just irritating I can’t sync it to my normal account so teams, onedrive etc are a bit of a pain.

You’ve got an illicit licence key clearly spat out by a keygen and you’re irritated that it’s not fully functional?

You’ve got an illicit licence key clearly spat out by a keygen and you’re irritated that it’s not fully functional?

I was working under the assumption it was some sort of surplus OEM licence key that couldn’t be sold on so they were registering them. It’s only a case of clicking the icon and changing from my old account to the new one when I’m working.

I suppose you weren’t to know until after you’d bought it. But still, two quid for Office is hella cheap.

@Jambourgie
How easy/quick was that?

Very, you download the Windows 10 media creation tool, & either upgrade your machine directly, or creat a bootable usb drive* to boot from, & upgrade. Lots of how to guides on the net, & many many posts on here 😉
Though if you struggle in any way, do post, don’t struggle alone!

*only really necessary if your replacing your drive with a faster ssd, which is a cheap easy upgrade for most older pc/laptops’s