For an upcoming build, having to buy Windows 7 is clamping down on the budget possibilites. I've heard that if I used a WGA remover after installing with the Windows disc, I wouldn't have to enter a product key and would still get updates. I'll look up more about this to see if it works, I'm a bit of a n00b when it comes to OS. But where do you guys usually get your OS from?
If you or anyone you know is a student see if you can use their info to get it at a discount
When my dad was a Student at the university He was able to order an upgrade disc (to win7 Pro) for me for about $30. We have a lone copy of vista we use to put on then we buy the cheaper upgrade pack and it allows us to reuse vista to jump start each upgrade. It works. Normally the non upgrade disc would've costed us about $50 (disc)
TL;DR universitys and schooling.
Windows 7 Pro: Student
Windows 8 Pro: Student
Mac OSX Lion: Bought it
Mint 13: Downloaded
Debian 7.0: Downloaded
There...
Manjaro, Arch, Slackware, CentOS, Gentoo, and Debian I all got by using the official downloads or torrents.
You could buy a used copy on eBay or something for a little bit cheaper. Or borrow a recovery disk from your friend, or something.
More than likely not the most LEGAL thing in the world....
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/24901-Windows-Loader-Current-release-information
I would scrounge the interbuts for people selling their retail copies. I saw a windows 7 disc and license on ebay once for around 50 dollars, and a Windows 8 Pro copy + license for 40
Then again, you can just download Linux and use that to hold you off until you can buy Windows,...if you absolutely have to use Windows xD
Another thing, is if you OWN a key , you can just download an ISO from wherever, and then use the legal key to activate it. Be sure to check the hash, though xD
Win7 came with the machine. WinXP for 5$ on eBay, Gentoo came from ThePirateBay.
Internet.
Why download Gentoo from TPB? Isn't it already free?
I get mine from Dreamspark because I can.
If you want 100% working pirated windows, get a clean MSDN image of W7 from TPB or anywhere else and use Loader by Daz to activate it. No knowledge or skills required, just open the thing and click Activate.
I usually copy the OS iso's over the network from my external harddrive. It is connected with a raspberry pi which runs a torrent client. So all the time there is a new distribution I care about I load the iso and share it with the world.
Windows 8 OEM is cheaper here than the Windows 7 OEMs not by much but still saves something :)
Torrent trackers of course. I pirate all my shareware software, because I don't have any money to spend on things like that. Currently runing Win 8 Pro x64 with KMS activation, updates normal and working for the price of 0 dollars. When you can get something for free that works just the same as it would if you buy it then why go that road, besides it's not like Gates (4 Windows in particular) is going to cry over you not buying a legit copy.
It has been since windows 98 since i bought the win OS legally, But i Actually bought the 60$ windows 8.
Because it was 60$.
.