Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Saturday, 10 January 2009 09:30
Opinion and Analysis
Page 3 of 4
Having a product key to active Windows 7 is crucial, because without one your copy of Windows 7 will stop working after 30 days.
Actually, you can use a “rearm” command to legally extend use of Windows 7 for 120 days without an activation key, with details
available here but to use Windows 7 beyond that, you’ll want a real key.
The best place to get a key will be the Microsoft’s
Windows 7 page, but due to that “overwhelming demand”, keys just aren’t available right now, but should be available, well… “soon”.
Reports suggest Microsoft is only going to issue 2.5 million keys and people are saying these will go quickly, but in reality you should hopefully have plenty of time to get a key.
Other places you can supposedly get an activation key are
here and
here, but I haven’t had any success in getting either of those two links to work.
I do have Windows 7 keys from the MSDN site, but this isn’t available to the public. I also noticed that the keys for the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 are the same.
I’ve also noticed that the keys only seem to work on a single computer – i.e. you cannot use the same key on multiple computers. I was under the impression that each key would let you activate up to 10 computers, but this does not seem to be the case.
I have asked Microsoft for clarification on this but, and if this changes I’ll definitely let you know, but for the time being if you want to try Windows 7 on several computers it looks like you’ll need several keys.
This might mean needing to have more than one email address, so you might need to create some additional email addresses in Hotmail, Yahoo Mail or Gmail in addition to whatever email it is you’re currently using.
So… Windows 7. Thus far it is everything Vista wasn’t, including “overwhelming” worldwide demand that Microsoft would have loved to have seen for Vista, but didn’t – despite the claim of over 180 million Vista licenses sold.
Windows 7 clearly IS the upgrade that XP users have been waiting for, and can easily upgrade to, although if your XP machine only has 512MB of RAM it’s still a good idea to upgrade it to 1GB of RAM, if not 2GB – especially considering RAM is cheap these days.
A RAM upgrade is still a lot cheaper than a whole new computer, too.
Two big questions for now: when will the final “RTM” version of Windows 7 be launched, and what price will Microsoft charge for the software?
Please read on to page 4.
