hey PC world fans Adam here and I have a question for you Lena yeah I just built
a PC at home and I spent all of my money on a really nice graphics card and I
don't have any money left over for a Windows 10 license is there any way yeah
is there any way I can find one for cheap or cheaper or maybe even free
actually yes oh okay that's actually your way to get it for well technically
free okay okay I'm listening yeah so I would say there's like three
different ways you could do it the first one is probably the easiest one and the
one that generates the least controversy in our office which is to just go out
and buy an OEM license okay I've actually done that before the
problem I have is that it's tied to a single computer yes weird licensing
stuff like like why is it so weird like that well that's what you can exchange
for a discount so typically a retail license will cost you what like a
hundred and thirty nine dollars for Windows 10 home and then two hundred
dollars for Windows 10 Pro that's it feel like you walked into Best Buy or
you went directly to Microsoft and bought it so om license is that an
exchange for slightly higher restrictions on what you can do with the
software then you get a bit of a discount like all the features are the
same right but it's just that you only can install it on that one PC whereas
the retail version where you pay more is that you know if you wanted to transfer
the license to a new PC down the road you can do that and there's no hassle
involved with that basically the way that the activation servers recognize
your system is that it's like a unique key they generate based on like certain
components in your system and the motherboard is one of them so if your
motherboard bites it and you have to replace it that's why often times the
server's won't recognize your PC anymore but if you were to replace like an SSD
or like you know your it should be the power supply should be okay still you
know GPU that kind of thing okay then it should be no problem at that point so
you're you're pretty much fine until you get a new motherboard then right and in
the past Microsoft's been fair a lenient about that where you can call
in and then you they kind of allow you to reactivate if you like kind of with
that process but it's still hassle standard borrowing a license is usually
110 for home and then 150 for Windows 10 Pro so I mean you're saving between what
like twenty to fifty dollars which is not a huge amount of savings in exchange
for a little of a hassle but it's really hard to get a Windows 10 discount yeah
people why people just go this route well do they ever go on sale could you
get a free even cheaper yes sometimes Newegg will actually have a discount if
you watch their daily newsletter it's not what's predictable when they do that
though so the most predictable time of year to do it would be Black Friday but
you're a little early from that if you're willing to wait you could get it
for I think last year was $85 for the Home version and 120 for the program
okay that's not bad yeah that's a decent
discount at that point okay but you have a bit of a wait to go so maybe one of
the other two options might work if that's not enough savings for you cuz I
don't know how much money you yeah also 85 that seems a little steep you know so
I'm gonna listen to the options to like make a decision what's number two number
two is far more complex but this is the way that you can get a free quote
unquote version Larry Cohn quote because nothing in life is free right so here's
the thing this is actually a strategy I can only recommend for US residents I
don't know what it's like in other countries okay but basically you're
looking for an education discount so if you're an adult then you're no longer
you know in college whatever you can actually sign up for courses at a
community college about half of the colleges I looked at offered some kind
of version of Windows 10 so the way works is that you have to be a student
and active students or a student current standing whatever the official term for
it is and the way you can do that is basically by sign up for a one unit
class and order one unit class yeah there are so them are like physical
education so like
yeah we swim class or a bootcamp class or a dance class if you wanted to learn
ballroom dance or something but there's occasionally stuff like intro to drawing
or like intro to HTML CSS video production which I'll take so you can do
it through that like a 1 unit class which in California which is one the
cheapest States is like 76 dollars for that class including the administrative
fees uh-huh so California offers Windows 10
education which is kind of like Windows 10 Pro but better because it's actually
closer to the enterprise version of Windows um so you get a bunch of those
features and it's a free license just is that it's not totally free because you
have to pay for the classes except that makes it yeah yeah so you'll cost you
out-of-pocket $76 but in the end what you're getting is the Windows 10 license
and you're also getting that class which is a pretty good deal if you were
thinking about taking classes anyway okay so it's kind of like an added bonus
are there other bonuses that maybe you can get while you're in there I think it
depends on the college but for example in San Francisco City College in San
Francisco there's like free office 365 account if your student okay so you get
access to you know Microsoft Word Excel access all that stuff PowerPoint and
then I think Adobe Creative Cloud the student discount is an option as well so
you're paying like what 20 bucks a month for the entirety of the sweet but you
access to all of its great so that's an option just it's complicated which is
why this might not be for everybody you have to go through different steps you
have to sign for a sign up for the college sign up for the class and then
you also have to sign up separately at the vendor and then have them verify
your student status usually before you can order the software okay and it's not
free at every college I saw some colleges charge like fifteen dollars or
so which is still pretty cheap okay but it's not free so it's all it's a lot of
homework just to to see upfront if this is cheaper than like an OEM you're right
in order to see if it's an option for you it doesn't car some legwork but if
you're if you're that broke now you may be
thing that you wanna spend time and honestly I've done the research for you
because we both live income yeah it's good my last question on this do I have
to show up to class in order to uh to be okay so I was that student that loved
getting perfect grades when possible so I could never recommend this and I don't
know what every colleges policy is about no-shows cuz they could drop you from
the class eventually I don't know how that works but if you're okay with a
failing grade on your record I suppose you don't have to show for the class
dude for the keys I guess you do for the keys listen this one seems a little
complicated for me are you sure there's not maybe another way something final
and cheap there is the final way of doing this which okay a lot of
controversy I'm just gonna present it to you oh and you can make your decisions
about it as you will so various a website called kinguin kinguin and it's
basically like a ebay or amazon marketplace in that you have a bunch of
third-party sellers on this website that sell their you know software keys okay
and among the listings are two for Windows 10 one for the home version and
one for the pro version okay and they cost including the basically it's like
buyer protection that you would find on eBay so the insurance with the insurance
is 33 dollars for a license um for home window sent home and 35 dollars for
Windows 10 Pro and this is an option available to people worldwide this this
seems cheap it is very cheap and the reason why it's so cheap is because I
think these are what you would call a gray market type products which is that
they're they're being sold in a method that was not originally agreed upon
between the seller and Microsoft okay which is which is to say I my guess is
that these are probably like leftover keys or extra keys from a volume
agreement that somebody had and though they're just kind of selling them on the
side and that's why they're so cheap and so that's why there's such strong
opinions about going through this route the people who are in favor of this say
like it's an amazing deal as long as you buy the insurance you're protected
against any bad sellers or invalid keys you know you don't don't really worry
about taking a loss or you know there's no real risk involved okay
people who are against it say you know like this is not how the keys are meant
to be used so there's that point there's the point that because they weren't
meant to be used in this way or be sold this way you could find that your
activation status suddenly goes offline at some point and because these are all
OAM licenses that you're buying then there's the same caveats that we
were talking about earlier and the tides are one machine is tied to one machine
and then if like your motherboard bites it you have to go through all that
hassle and then there's a potentially the extra sticky layer because you
bought it through somebody else and not directly from an authorized retailer
that kind of stuff so huge savings very low hassle but comes with that big
caveat of like how comfortable are you with all of that so you should
definitely consider your options and and way that one heavy before you get into
it just because it can be so controversial mom have you seen any of
our other video you will know that Gordon is not a big fan of this
whereas Brad is so okay well I'm curious to see what everyone out there thinks
and if you've used any of these options or if you've never heard any of them
like the education one I had no idea trying to find a way to save money that
it's smart a little bit for its smart well thank you for for doing this
legwork I have some thinking to do yeah and I'll get back to you are you sure
you don't have like a Windows Vista license and are on somewhere I can just
borrow how is the response Windows 7 I would've been I would've been five but
you said this stuff I feel like I've seen a lot of these thingies
I got it around you know oh okay alright then we will see you later