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Comment by jhoh | Hacker News Reader

I recently was asked by my girlfriends sister to help her choose a laptop. After finding a model that looked good spec-wise I searched for that same model but without Windows pre-installed. It was 150€ cheaper. Then I got a 10€ Windows 10 key from ebay, installed O&O ShutUp and Winaero Tweaker and now it almost feels like a great system that you can actually work with.

Vendor-bloatware has been bad since Windows 7 but now that even Microsoft chose to ship Windows itself with ads, pre-installed garbage like Candy Crush Saga and that annoying Cortana I can't imagine going back to it.

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> Then I got a 10€ Windows 10 key from ebay

A rather unfair comparison, don't you think? That's like saying "I got a really good deal on a Macbook, all I had to do was pick it up and sprint out of the Apple store!"

It also would have been a better deal if I bought it from the official MS-Store for 145€ because it wouldn't have had all the Lenovo bloatware on it.

I personally don't want to support what Microsoft is doing with Windows so that's why I bought it from a shady ebay seller.

Of course, the more ethical solution would have been to talk her into a GNU/Linux machine but I don't have the time and energy to play IT support for the next six months.

Why not a chromebook?

Considering the quality and the fact that Win10 actually serves you adds and sells telemetry information, I think the price should be even lower.

The consumer has the responsibility to check the validity of the product, sure, but this is ridiculously unfeasible for digital licenses. A lot of companies actually do buy these 10$ keys and I don't blame them.

Any source on them selling telemetry data?

They haven't provided one, but I'm guessing if someone provides a source, it'll be a link to Microsoft's ads products. They'll argue this information _could_ be used to target users for advertisements, even though it might not be.

like this?

https://law.stackexchange.com/a/1848/1059

you're dismissive, but they've specifically claimed the legal right to sell your usage data. it seems pretty clear to me.

There are no legitimate Windows licenses that only cost 10€. They may activate but successful activation does not imply that you are not breaching Microsofts license agreement and they may decide to deactivate those licenses at any time

Wasn't the ban on resale of licenses declared illegal at least in some countries? In that case, second hand licenses would very well be legal, even if Microsoft doesn't like them.

I don't know, but I would be surprised if such a ruling applied to licenses that were never intended for the country they are resold in.

Those licenses are mostly from education institutions or from company MSDN subscription. I.e. from rogue IT admins that abuse their power.

it is illegal in Poland

It is 100% legal in Poland and rest of EU. Oracle vs Usedsoft http://www.osborneclarke.com/insights/the-end-of-the-usedsof...

yet on polish amazon (allegro) they do nothing :)

This seems like ebay's problem. Why are they not shut down for this? If I came across some software on e-bay, I'd assume it was legit. I just checked ebay and it is full of windows keys. How am I, as a consumer, supposed to know that this is 'illegal'?

Commenting as a reaction would help more than just downvoting of course, because I am still not seeing how, as a consumer, I am supposed to know that those are illegal keys. Other platforms that facilitate fraud on this scale are always forced to take action, yet ebay gets away with it. I am wondering why that is.

The same way you're supposed to know if a bike is stolen. If the given market is grey/shady and the price is excessively low, and you really want to know, you ask (for starters).

If everyone got a "free" bike when you bought a computer then the people who didn't want to use their's and so bothered to sell it would probably sell it for $10 or so?

You can get £20 books for 50p, because either the person has finished using the book, and there are lots of books; or because the person got the book free (as a gift generally) and didn't really want it; or because they bought a copy and got a second copy gifted, etc.

Software isn’t a bike. It might be a special deal Microsoft has with those vendors. Bikes have an intrinsic minimal cost, like materials and shipping, software keys don’t. The average consumer would probably regard windows as something that is free to begin with so seeing it for sale for $10 probably won’t strike them as strange, you get it “free” with your computer after all.

Furthermore, this is not one vendor selling one ‘stolen’ item, it is many, selling many keys. This makes it seems like a legitimate channel for keys to the average consumer. It also makes eBay more responsible if you ask me. It seems to me as if they are making a profit from those sales. If they truly are illegal keys then they should probably do something about it.

So why am I wrong here?

You could apply the same low price is stolen goods argument during black Friday too.

Vendor bloatware has been bad since 95

Ah yes, "Sign up for the Microsoft Network"

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