• dansity@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      Windows -at this point- is free to use at least for personal reasons and there are zero consequences if you don’t activate your copy. They used to give you deadline in the XP/Vista era to activate your copy but not anymore. All you get is a watermark in the corner that either bothers you or not. They are as well very sloppy with closing activation methods, they could just close a new gate every patch Tuesday but they don’t do it. It is far far more important to them that everyone is using windows and there is a high chance based on last week’s news that there will be a subscription “premium” version like in any app that removes ads and enables AI features.

      • nous@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        All you get is a watermark in the corner

        Well, that is a consequence. Just not a very big one. You also cannot change the background in the settings, though that is also a very small consequence. Yeah, they are only small and you can likely live with them, but small and tolerable are not zero.

        there will be a subscription “premium” version like in any app that removes ads and enables AI features.

        This makes me glad I no longer use it. An OS should not have ads baked into its core and there should not be a subscription for it.

        • jaybone@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Maybe for now it’s just the background and the watermark.

          Like every other subscription service, they will start to fuck with you.

          • 10EXP@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Specifically background changes from the settings*

            You can just right click an image in File Explorer and set it as desktop background :p