Windows 10 free version

I think it may be argued that an upgrade is an additional feature not a replacement and that depriving someone of the use, without their approval, of a genuine purchased CD of Win7, might be classified as something else.

I got some reserve Win 7 activation keys , duplicated system drives, reassigned the Win 7 keys and did Win 10 upgrades. It worked with some effort overall, got most of the software working and the best is that even the Epson printer oldies like the R265 and Pro 7600 are running with the Vista/Win7 drivers as unsigned drivers. This upgrading went much better than with a prior system running some USB dongle key software for license protection. I have a few printers in the basement - is that already printer hoarding ? Anyway - Win10 is not supposed to be phased out anymore so those printers still have a future. I'm not sure when I'm actually going to use Win 10 on the systems instead - I'll probably start easy and get a smaller Win10 tablet or something as a playground.

Well whaddaya know a 10 year old PSU trashed itself ( a note, I looked inside PSU. Leaking secondary capacitors made in China) and took down one of my small SSDs in the process...fortunately it was not my main rig.
Now that got me wondering, in the future, how do I reinstall with a new drive if Win 10 will no longer be a free upgrade? What happens when the media crashes....do we lose the OS completely as well?

Also a word of warning, the brand of capacitors does make a difference in durability. (It also does make a difference in audio quality in Hi Fi as well.) For those capable of opening up their PSUs...can be dangerous! and LETHAL. Maybe an annual check for leaking capacitors once the PSU is past warranty.

yes, those capacitors are very weak components indeed, in power supplies, those with the voltage regulators around the processor socket on the mainboard etc. It is my understanding that W10 ties itself to the hardware, but probably, most likely not to the system disk, serial number whatever, but that does not seem to be very clear yet. I'm reading rumors that there will be some remedy in case a motherboard fails - e.g. something like a reactivation via a automated phone or the hotline or something - we'll see.

Well read between the lines. I had put in a new PSU and when my drive did not boot, I used another drive from another machine and it booted up and just needed a driver update for the video. Went back to the original machine. Fine as well. Totally different hardware and it went along twice. Does this mean Win 10 does not differentiate hardware? It looks so.

The validity of the key is most likely not checked during boot, but at latest when the system tries to check for and download updates. You may run your system, after the original validation, completely offline, I don't know what you can do in that situation - changing disks , motherboard ? But then you would not get all the nice and new features anymore.....I have software which asks me once in a while for the install CD , the orginal one, not a copy of it. So there can be other tricks and checks happen in that situation

I changed the cpu, disk drives, RAM, video card on my old Dell last year (but not at the same time), so almost everything except the mobo, PSU and case and did not have any authorisation problem.
Probably the mobo is the identification.

I doubt it is possible to install WIN10 offline, you know it is registered or not from the beginning.

Upgraded yesterday my wife's laptop (with an installation ISO, MS download servers were overloaded) and everything seems OK.
Did not have any hard- or software that was not compatible (even if MS said so).

IMO Win10 is very stable now.
And even if I'll have to install WIN10 from scratch (as I had to do with mine) it is perfectly legal after July 29.

that's interesting , offline installation would require an activation by phone I assume, anyway, I'll go slow to work with W10 instead of W7.

I made the jump from Win 7 to Win 10 this week on two machines. Everything seems to work as before. All printers/scanners/other peripherals still functional. All software seems ok. Stable for me!

Only issue was screen resolution default, recommended setting of 125% yielded fuzzy text on some software screens. Set to 100% worked better for me.

Also made the jump to Win 10 couple of weeks back.

First on my wife's laptop - el cheapo Samsung with a cr@p TN panel. Went so well and easily that I foolishly expected the same on my more sophisticated desktop a couple of days later.

Everything seemed to go OK following the update until i tried to re-calibrate my monitor, a DELL 2413U wide gamut that is hardware calibrated using X-Rite`s I1display Pro and their proprietary software. It writes the calibration date into a hardware LUT in the monitor. - Dell produced the monitor and X-Rite the colorimeter and software. Unfortunately after the upgrade I lost all connectivity to the monitor profiles. Dell and X-rite each said it was the not their problem, and had no further interest in my predicament. Extremely frustrating.

After a couple of days scouring the internet and forums found a solution. Here is the ridiculous nature of this problem. On an obscure forum I was told to upgrade the driver in the SD card reader embedded in the monitor, and was given a link to the file. By now I was in a "Hail Mary" mode so recklessly clicked on the links and authorized the file installation to change my computer settings.

I was fully expecting the "Blue Screen of Death" upon rebooting, but miraculously every thing now seems to work OK.

Unfortunately this all coincided with Adobe's roll out of Adobe`s Photo-shop CC 1015.5 which successfully clobbered some plugins and other settings. Between Adobe, Microsoft, X-rite and Dell I lost about 2 days of planned activity.

Glad it is over. Would never have upgraded in I had known the consequences.

rs