Buying Windows OS - advise

[taylsy01]

On 21/06/2018 at 09:50, KenONeill said:

@taylsy01 - I'm not sure this advice applies to my situation. I have genuine MS Office installed on machines that are used stand-alone and never with any network connection. I'd like them to not throw "this product is not activated" messages because they can't phone home to the beast of Redmond.

 

I don't think your picking this up fully. The machines can still talk to Microsoft. In an enterprise environment you would setup a KMS server on the network and point all the machines to that for activation. The program I'm suggesting sets up a small version of a KMS server local and points activation locally. All windows update error reporting etc at go to  Microsoft. 

 

Also you can't have an version of office above 2003 installed on a non networked machine. Unless you used Microsoft telephone activation. Which I've only called once years ago and it was a pretty bad service. Not sure if it's improved. And there is no way doing something on one machine can affect another completely non networked machine. If the machines non networked. It's can't "phone home" by any means in the first place.

 

If you don't want to use the program due to fear of third party programs then that's fine but the activation method remains the same on your machine as it would with the program. All windows/office home user products point to Microsofts home user KMS server for activation. All enterprise ones point to that companies locally networked Kms server. All I've suggested is locally hosting a Kms server to activate using a third p program to make life easier. I could talk you through setting up a locally network propose Microsoft Kms server as well but it's a fair wee bit of work.

[camelspyyder]

2 hours ago, SWBoy said:

Be aware that support for Windows 7 will end on January 14th 2020 (less than 2 years time) so after that date you won't get any security updates and be vulnerable to zero day exploits.

 

W7 end of support 14/1/20

 

I will have to start planning for the future. 

I grabbed an old laptop out of the cupboard to take overseas at New Year and it was running Vista!  Only put 7 on it this week.

[KenONeill]

@taylsy01 - Cheers; there are reasons why those machines can never be connected to the internet, and ideally never connected to any form of network.

[taylsy01]

29 minutes ago, KenONeill said:

@taylsy01 - Cheers; there are reasons why those machines can never be connected to the internet, and ideally never connected to any form of network.

No problems, I won't ask. I just hope it's not related to any pictures on it lol

[KenONeill]

22 minutes ago, taylsy01 said:

No problems, I won't ask. I just hope it's not related to any pictures on it lol

Well, I could tell you but then I'd have to shoot you. Enough said?

[VWD]

On 11/28/2017 at 10:50, S00perb said:

Every item of technology goes through a sweet spot of perfection. W7 seems to be it for me. W10 takes away your update control and Microsoft could bust every PC in the world overnight with just one bad overnight update. Not a very good idea

I thought I'd give W10 one last chance, and on a spare HD updated my W7 on that drive to the W10 upgrade and then on to the latest 1709 update. I'm glad I did- it's worth the hassle as W10 /1709 is great. Only problem I have is that MS want to upgrade drivers for hardware I never use and doing this corrupts my WiFi drivers.