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.
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.
deleted by creator
No, you don’t. You can just be unverified forever
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.
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.
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.
Maybe for now it’s just the background and the watermark.
Like every other subscription service, they will start to fuck with you.
Specifically background changes from the settings*
You can just right click an image in File Explorer and set it as desktop background :p