Windows 7 free for a year and secure for pirates
Windows 7 is almost here, with a May 5 release date for the RC and an October release of the final product inadvertently revealed by the boss of laptop manufacturer Acer. With this comes news that Windows 7 will be free for a year and pirated copies will once again be kept nice and secure by Microsoft.
Things are finally beginning to happen with Windows 7. Sure, they’ve been happening behind the scenes for months that we know of and years that we don’t, but Microsoft’s new OS is now days away from having its Release Candidate released, and just a few months away from getting released properly.
As rumored weeks ago, the Release Candidate is now available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers, with a general release to the rest of us promised on May 5. This RC will be as near as is humanly possible to the RTM version, which many of us will be looking to buy later in the year.
As PC Pro notes, with an expiry date of June 1, 2010 for the Release Candidate, Microsoft is effectively giving away a stable and working version of Windows 7 for over a year. This gives those people burned by too eagerly adopting Vista early on a chance to live with the new OS for a while before fully committing to upgrading their system(s).
Microsoft has previously warned any users of beta versions of Windows 7 to do a clean install rather than an upgrade to avoid any conflicts and to give the company the proper feedback it needs to help users who will be following the normal route of installation.
Also confirmed is the fact that like all previous versions of Windows, pirated copies will still be given access to all the important updates. Softpedia quotes Paul Cooke, Microsoft director of Windows Client Enterprise Security as stating that all “service packs, update roll-ups, and important reliability and application compatibility updates” will be available to “the users of non-genuine Windows systems.”
Microsoft is committed to stamping out the rampant piracy of its software but it refuses to do so by compromising the security of the systems running non-genuine versions of Windows. Which should be applauded.
Related Posts:
