This is an endless discussion. M$ released 4 types of Win 7. Each higher type has more features and higher price. It was up to the buyer to choose the type he wants and pay what M$ was asking for.
If you what to use 32G of memory, Install Win 7 Pro or Ultimate or downgrade to win 10 home (128G limit).
Hi Larry,
in a way MS shot themselves in the foot with 7.
They released so many different versions, with multiple user rights and perfomance options.
i can think of 7 core versions, not including the 1 language/browser rights and regional based options
Any way back to your Amazon purchase
As they required you to download the Iso from a chinese site, my guesss is that it was hacked so that the key you purchased would have been returned as genuine. From the error message you got would imply that it was a Volume licence which would either have loopback or non commercial server validation
DESTROY IT youve no idea what else was included in it.
It also breaks the EULA terms
Roy
Megahertz07 - like i said earlier, i don't mind paying for value added features, but removing an arbitrarially created limitation is not an "value added" feature in the true sense.
Last edited by larryccf; 02 Dec 2017 at 09:19.
thanks but i never bothered downloading it from the chinese website and wouldn't have - i found out about chinese backdoors built into security cameras, wireless mainly, so that's kept me leary.
It returned as a "Blocked" key when i tried it to activate the copy of win 7 ult that i'd downloaded thru HeiDoc that you suggested, and that one was direct from microsoft's web. It was just strange or awfully strong wording from microsoft that the key "had been blocked", not just invalid, that caught my attention - i informed amazon with a screen capture. The only reason i thought there was a chance they were legit as vendors offering those product keys were so prolific on amazon. Ebay i don't have much trust in, but would have thought amazon would have policed those vendors out, but guess i was wrong
link to the screen capture Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet
then for the hey of it, out of frustration, i thought i'd give my old retail copy's key a try, and the damn thing activated - go figure, microsoft had returned it as "not valid" when i tried to use it to download an iso copy off their website (before using the HeiDoc download tool)
Microsoft, and any other software and most hardware designer does not design an product then add options to it, they design the full package and this generates a sales price. If they feel that the Sales Price is too high for some markets they will then decide how to lower the price whilst not making it easy for those who need certain features to just purchase the cheaper special version.
In the case of Windows 7 MS produced the Volume Licenced Enterprise version, (and the Key Licenced identical Ultimate version)they then removed some features that would be essential or at least attractive to major corporations and Produced a Pro version that could work with the same servers as Enterprise but had other high end features limited or removed. They then looked at the smaller Personal computer sector and in consultation with the OEM partners chose Max memory as one of the features that could be reduced but still give a working OS for the purpose it was likely to be used for, and the OEMs were prepared to pay for Other things were also removed for the same reason, at the same time Group Policy editor is one more important of these.
This is business - If you do not like Microsoft's sales policy for operating systems you could move to apple and pay 3 times as much or linux where the support for serious software is unfortunately very lacking
If we look at other industries we see the same feature removal - the bottom car in the range that I drive is capable of reaching the fastest allowed speed legal on the road, My version is capable of more than twice that, some is down to hardware upgrades, but a lot is due to removal of artificial restrictions in the CPU, Of course the two vehicles are vastly different in price. It would not be sensible to sell them both at the same price as the purchaser of either would either be overcharged or they would get something for nothing - which no seller is going to allow
Barman58 - from my perspective you're using what Ram OEMs were shipping their computers with commonly, as somehow justifying MS inserting an unnecessary artificial limitation into their software. Without that limitation, those OEMs could have still shipped product that only had 2 or 4GB of ram - so that isn't a justification for limiting the software.
I purchased MS Office 2007 because i wanted the extra features, ie Excel spread sheets, the email browser with added features and I purchased it actively aware of what i was paying for and getting. WHAT INTEREST DID MS HAVE IN EVEN CARING HOW MUCH RAM I'D BE USING?? If there was any valid interest, why didn't they limit the amount of HDD capacity as well, as 500GB and maybe 750GB HDDs were the upper end of what was available back then?
Go look at that scenario i described in an earlier post about Google/NEST cameras and their attempt to strong arm customers into subscribing to their cloud storage, which btw, is the most expensive storage offered - but not only strong arming the average un-informed (ie computer literacy) users into subscribing, but even those that are somewhat literate by actively preventing them from storing their video stream on their own server! - that's where accepting this "strong arm" business model has led the technology industry to. Do a search on youtube for "Nest & Blue Iris", BI being the video management software. There are dozens of workarounds to getting NEST to work with BI - don't bother viewing the videos, but read the comments, more than a few posters joke about NEST having a team of engineers monitoring the web for "workarounds" and then writing code to defeat them, all over storing a video stream created by the camera the user paid for. So you don't think me a hypocrite, when i sold the camera, i stated clearly in the listing the reason for the sale - i didn't like being strong armed and explained what i just described, that and the loss of motion detection alerts. It's a nice feature, being able to answer your front door bell over your smartphone while you at the hardware store, never letting the visitor know you're not home. And you loose that if you don't subscribe and NEST doesn't state that except to state "some features" not available without cloud storage subscription.
This is the last response i'm to going to make on this subject, please let's agree to disagree.
Well larryccf, I think after reading all this again I found out what your real complaint is.
Home Premium doesn't allow you to use all the ram you want to use and you can't find a counterfeit COA key for Ultimate that works.
Getting a copy of Ultimate is easy and cheap. A legal Ultimate COA key is what cost.
Going by memory when I checked a long time ago, the cost was over $300.00 for Ultimate. About a year or so ago I bought Windows 7 Pro for $140.00. 95% or more of that cost is a legal COA key that came with it.
No member on this forum as far as I know can change the way Microsoft markets their products. That doesn't mean we agree with everything Microsoft does. It means we like their products and we accept their rules.
As Nigel posted. You can choose other operating system.
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I will bet a $3 bill to a watermelon other companies will not let you or anybody else dictate how they market their products.
Jack
Jack
On the subject of Amazon, there are a lot of private sellers there. Newegg would have been a safer option. As for Windows versioning, ALL of Windows NT versions have had limiting editions. If you think about it they would love to charge everyone $600+ for all of the "features" of data center but they understand that not everyone has the vast wealth of an enterprise. So by creating different versions with different features, both in the home and server versions, they allow users to choose the version that fits their needs and budget. These applies to more than just ram but also processors, integrated applications, hardware, power features, and business oriented features. Yes some of these editions have less hardware capabilities than others and that is something I would look at for processor and ram but not so much hard drive space, since you like to bring that up, but that is my personal opinion. As for different editions they do this for more than just Windows but virtually every product they sell such as office, visual studio, sql server, office server, etc. As of the latest version of sql server they are even starting to license versions based on the number of cores rather than processors. As I've pointed out before this isn't new to 7. What so many people have said here is that you get what you pay for. Actually though it is a very effective business model since it saves users money. End users have virtually no rights except to use the software within the confines of the EULA or to find another product. If you can afford to pay M$ a few hundred million $$$ for the source code then you can write the terms as you see fit and use it however you want on whatever you want. That is if you can get them to sell their biggest cash cow.
townsbg - i understand what you're saying, but i don't think you guys grasp what i'm saying - i think it's fundamentally a background conditioning factor, ie you guys live/breathe this computer/technology stuff and i used to make chips (metal chips, ie manufacturing) for a living.
I think you guys have been conditioned for too long to accepting this business model as acceptable, same as the incredible lack of privacy that silicon valley had gotten everyone accustomed to - look at the Google assistant, amazon's Alexa etc, that picks up every word said in a room and records it. They all first denied it then admitted it. Hell, my Google Pixel phone, the entire phone case is a transducer - i've wrapped the phone in a bath towel and said the words "ok google" and the the google assistant opens - who needs a microphone that sensitive?
I went looking at 4K writers / burners - i flipped when i saw the system requirements: minimum Kaby Lakes CPU, Win 10 and a dedicated GPU with minimum 8 GBs - reason i flipped out, wtf - i record off my 4k display a 4k video stream, and burn it with a standard blu-ray writer, play it on a 4k TV and it is definitely 4k resolution on my TV. The GPU w 8GB requirement i understand, but the Kaby Lakes and Win 10?? I'm running Win 7 Pro on my video rig, using an i7-4960x CPU (4th gen) with a Nvidia 8GB GPU (that's 3 years old), 64 GB of ram - but they're strong arming the market into buying new components they don't really need. Hell yes i'm critical, and you would be too if this kind of business model were practiced in any other industry, automotive is the one i think everyone can relate to.
I don't oppose charging more for editions or versions of software offering more features in the way of actual new features, be it WMC, or enhanced publishing features etc, but to artificially limit the ram capacity so you can make that a "feature" in the elevated version you want to sell, and force folks who shelled out coin for a version they had no idea had a limitation they weren't aware of. An earlier poster tried to justify to me that at the time, 2 to 4 GB of ram were pretty much the norm, and i'll accept that - but what purpose did MS have in limiting their software to 16GB? - the only one i can think of is pure unabashed greed - those OEMs could have shipped the same product with the same 2-4 GB of ram without that limitation in win 7 Home Premium.
To the poster that tried to ignorantly insinuate my real goal was to secure a counterfeit COA, what i left out of my history of purchases is that i've bought 3 frigging copies of Win 7 OEM Home Premium, original sealed in the box from MS, from Newegg and Amazon, and when a system went down, or i changed HDDs or SSDs and wanted to do a clean install, MS would not let me - same mobo, some computer just a different drive.
Think about if you bought a car, and found that when you went in for service at the dealership, you were told, "Oh you've installed floor mats in the back seats - if you wanted to do that, you should have bought the SE model - same car with a little more chrome but with SE plagues on the rear end. But we're going to have void your warranty now". That is no different than the ram limitation - please tell me WHAT CONCERN / INTEREST it is of MS what or how much ram i install in my computer?
I'm sorry but you're not going to get me to accept that conduct until you or someone can answer that question convincingly (the question in bold). If that limitation was acceptable, then what about a HDD capacity limitation? That Ram limitation was what they call in poker a "tell" - the only goal that i can deduct was greed accomplished by strong arming the customer. MS wants to charge more for Super XX edition which has more features, actual value added features - i can accept that. But this limitation was an arbitrary false & unnecessary limitation.
Again, you guys seem to all have lived in this environment that it seems normal - i'm 69 yrs old, and it's not to me, so let's agree to disagree.
And just so you don't think i'm some sort of idealist - other industries try the same thing, but nowhere near what is possible in the computing industry. In the late 60s to mid 70s i was a BMW/Nissan mechanic at a dealership. Nissan had a frigging little stupid "S" shaped hose that fed warm water to the carburetor base, about the size of your little finger - same hose with one part number for a Datsun 1200 was $5.xx retail, exact same hose for a Datsun 510 with different part # was $10.xx. Starters for all the Datsun/Nissan line were retail $400 for manual trans models, $450 for auto trans model (no real justification in pricing). They got away with it because in the early 70s we had our first gas shortage and people were buying japanese cars like my wife buys Cheetos. Then when some outfit in California went over to Japan and bought enough core starters that they could rebuild and sell as rebuilt starters, their price to the dealership was $100, and we retailed them for $200. Overnite, the Nissan retail price came down to $250. Literally within 30 days of the rebuilt starter svc came out. But nowhere did the auto industry have the ability to collude and do what Intel & MS are doing re 4K burners.
BTW - that retired microsoft engineer friend of mine, what i didn't state earlier, interestingly he runs / owns Apple computers.
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