Wow...$14 for Windows 7 AND an 8GB flash drive!

Wow. If Microsoft did this i wouldn't have to buy a cd-drive.

When I bought a student upgrade it came with a windows ISO to thumb but it was pulled due to open source code possibly being part of the third party program. I had heard that MS was going to reissue this program it also would install DVD's and ISO's to a thumb. I used it so I have a 8 gig bootable thumb and a DVD.

These packages were actually available in China a week before the official W7 launch, and there are so called 'pre-activated' versions of W7 which are floating around in warez-land in ISO form and can be burned and run from a disk.

For every measure there shall be a counter-measure... (which seems to be the pirates law on the conservation of their momentum... )

Hi all
I sometimes think that even if MS gave the stuff away FREE (or even with a 5 USD voucher) people would STILL pirate the stuff -- just because they could.

You'll never kill piracy - you can only reduce it to something less than a "minor irritant".

The main problems in China (or at least talking to a Chinese colleague whilst drinking delicious Chinese Beer in a great pub in the "French Concession" in one of Shanghai's best tourist districts recently) are


1) suspicion that any "Official" copy has "secret government spyware " inserted in it to make sure people aren't accessing "Non approved" websites -- a bit paranoid but you have to have visited China --not Hong Kong BTW to understand this.

2) Whilst China has made HUGE economic strides recently for a lot of people 14 USD is still a significant amount of money. Pricing must be made a lot more realistic for the Chinese market.

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

Hi all
I sometimes think that even if MS gave the stuff away FREE (or even with a 5 USD voucher) people would STILL pirate the stuff -- just because they could.

You'll never kill piracy - you can only reduce it to something less than a "minor irritant".

The main problems in China (or at least talking to a Chinese colleague whilst drinking delicious Chinese Beer in a great pub in the "French Concession" in one of Shanghai's best tourist districts recently) are


1) suspicion that any "Official" copy has "secret government spyware " inserted in it to make sure people aren't accessing "Non approved" websites -- a bit paranoid but you have to have visited China --not Hong Kong BTW to understand this.

2) Whilst China has made HUGE economic strides recently for a lot of people 14 USD is still a significant amount of money. Pricing must be made a lot more realistic for the Chinese market.

Cheers
jimbo

Thats just their government the NSA has had backdoor stuff working with MS since XP.

cant wait till windows gives us preloaded terabyte hard drives preinstalled with windows you just hookup, then start and go trough a little configuring. the preinstall cant be deleted :O so yeah, that would suck if u wanted to sell just the drive

Embedded versions of Windows have been available for years...

They're what powers many fruit machines in gambling malls LOL...