One must ask. “dear Microsoft. The motherboard failed in my PC so I replaced it, now windows wants to re-activate but it’s telling me I need to buy a new license. How do I correct this”
Expected MS reply
“hear EU, we are sorry you experienced a motherboard failure. Due to the failure of the motherboard that our software was linked to here is a link so you can go and buy our software again”
A license to software as, up until now, been a license to use said software on ANY computer. With the ability to uninstall it from an old PC and re-install it on a new one.
Microsoft has obviously changed this. Fine. I bought an upgrade I legitimately had coming because I bought a computer (well actually 3 computers) during the time MS said you had to to get the 15 dollar upgrade. I got my key, downloaded it to a thumb drive and installed it on one of my computers.
I stole nothing.
However, I won’t be buying any more windows 8 licenses for ANY of my computers. I’ll stick with 7.
I did also get my free media center key but not to cheat the system. I paid for the software and I guess I’ll keep the old dual core around a while.
Oop .. yea, my response did kinda read as if I were implying you used the loophole to get a $15 copy. Sorry.
What I meant is that the existence and publication of this loophole made me think “this can’t be the same as the $40 license” and it wasn’t.
Similarly the people who are using this other thing to get a free copy will probably be disappointed soon.
So ... on your old dual-core ... how’s the boot time? Faster boot, lower memory footprint, and (for the gamers) more DirectX features are good Win8 points.
You may end up happy that you put your Win8 on the older machine for the leanness alone.