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Windows 7 was the last really good Windows. MS lost sight of the goal after that.
I really wish MS had stuck with the Windows 8/Phone direction - bright square blocks that didn't waste space, which felt like it was a full refutation of the transparent everything of Vista that was still there to some extent in 7.

Looking at macOS 26, it's hard not to compare it visually to Vista given the transparency emphasis. Hopefully in a few years an Alan Dye-free Apple will move in a different direction.

Funny enough, the awful UI in Windows 8 (especially the start menu) drove me to become a mac daily driver.
Oh, the initial screens in Win8 were quite awful and offputting for most people who used earlier Windows versions, but the actual UI widget designs felt good.
Nadella lost sight of the goal. Windows 7 was Ballmer.
Nadella more than 10x'ed the value of Microsoft. I doubt many MS execs think it was the wrong call to move Windows work to the B team.

EDIT: somehow people seem to think I'm defending MS here. I'm not, I'm concurring that MS willingly turned Windows to shit (by moving it to the B team) because they thought they could earn more money elsewhere (and they were right). I don't like it, but I bet the people who got filthy rich over it do.

That mindset is why every tech product is turning to shit. They're not consumer focused. All Nadella cares about is making the stock price go up and extracting value.
Stock price does not equal good software. Quite the opposite because your trying to exploit the end user for more profit.
I'm assuming they were referring to a non-monetary goal.
Through Azure, Office, LinkedIn, gaming. Not so much Windows.
Microsoft CHANGED the goal. Cloud makes bucket loads more than consumer - it also has awesome vendor lock-in and juicy monthly fees!

MS didn't lose sight of anything. They've been after the money for a while, and they just followed the money.

I don't like what Microsoft has done, but I annoyingly admit they're doing what's in the best interest of their bank balance.

I find Win10 to be a much more refined and polished experience, only ruined by telemetry.
Windows 10 is decent if you have the Pro version. 7 is good but is a PITA on touchscreen or HiDPI devices, although I have to say even 10 still has its bugs. Never tried 11 though, I'll keep riding 10 on my machines.
Windows 10 was the start of the forceful push towards use of Microsoft accounts and telemetry, dark patterns to achieve that and weird features nobody wants like like Bing search in the menu or the help opening bing in Edge rather than an actual help or your browser of choice, all that to improve random KPIs without considering user satisfaction.

Compared to that, Windows 8 was misguided but not a strong attempt at disrespecting user consent.

Windows 7 kind of pulled me back from Ubuntu. Alas it was only for a few years.
Satya Nadella became CEO in 2014, mainstream Windows 7 support ended in early 2015. The dark ages continue.
From a security perspective, I'd really really like not just a pre-baked image, but also instructions on how to replicate that using only files and tools with known-good hashes and/or digital signatures.

I too distinctly remember the times I earned my money cleaning up malware, and a few times the root cause was someone using pre-cracked install media from some shady torrent.

I imagine some beefy Microsoft support contracts were required to get all of these updates through this month, with restrictions on redistribution; this isn't Linux!

Is there any reason that downloading this is more legal than downloading the latest Hollywood movie?

> Is there any reason that downloading this is more legal than downloading the latest Hollywood movie?

Windows ISOs with updates being baked in by third parties (usually computer magazines) has been a thing for well over a decade, ever since MS ceased to do Service Packs. So the pure act of distributing an ISO that hasn't been modified other than applying the official update packages should have enough precedence on the side of distribution being allowed that MS won't be able to do much more than maybe sending a nastygram your way.

What you definitely shouldn't do though is pre-crack the ISOs... but I doubt Microsoft even cares about that at this point. Massgrave (a very popular collection of activators for everything from Windows through Office) is hosted on Github.

Unlike earlier times, MS doesn't (need to) care about piracy any more, at least not from private users. The real revenue comes from enterprise and government contracts and, most importantly, the cloud.

So legally a gray area, but ethically and financially not a problem.
> Bob Pony, a known enthusiast in the Windows community

I am 100% sure this guy has all the good intentions, but from a security perspective, I don't know if it is any better than a completely unpatched Windows 7 ISO.

Unpatched Windows 7 is vulnerable to WannaCry/EternalBlue, among other well-known weaknesses.
Not the point. The point is that nobody who doesn't know him knows whether he can be trusted, and the ISO itself might be prepared on a compromised machine unintentionally. This is very much a supply chain issue.
And it downloads at ADSL speeds for the full experience (although Cloudflare in front of the ISO kind of breaks character).

https://imgur.com/a/HEjIEVn

For me the torrent file currently is coming down at 26MB/s
Going to get this and install it on my old Asus core2duo laptop from circa 2008 - damn thing still is going strong, despite plastic becoming so brittle it has not one single panel left without cracks in it. Currently it has XP on it, but that is missing whole bunch of drivers, like touchpad not working and BIOS AHCI has to be in compatible mode otherwise it will bluescreen. It's going to be nostalgia machine where all the games I used to play back in the days are installed.
I have 24h left on the download. Is anyone who has the file willing to create a torrent to share? I can't click on the twitter link for some reason.
Twitter links via xcancel https://xcancel.com/TheBobPony/status/2014011109406105858 https://xcancel.com/TheBobPony/status/2012654119811432608

Archive.org link in the first has a torrent link.

Waiting for the torrent for the Win7 ISO
Thank you
Security updates up to 2026? If I knew this I wouldn't have upgraded to Win11 recently :)
Infinite captcha loop for me. Not using a VPN/proxy/1.1.1.1/anything like that.
Windows Vista technically got to live to see Frutiger Aero come back
Only the ones after it got bad
Piracy is allowed on HN now?
Yes? All news articles contain a link to archive.is as a pinned comment.
There are no pinned comments here. Any archive.is links are posted by random members.
I don't see one here?
This still requires you to have a valid Windows 7 or Vista key.
Maybe a nit, but this isn't piracy. Windows has been officially free to download and install since Windows XP. That was when Microsoft switched to their Product Activation DRM, and the license key became the bit you paid for.

Tangent: I miss MSDN AA

My understanding is that "free to download" means only from MS, but I could be wrong. And I suppose the only way to know for sure would be to take the issue to court, which is also going to be a subjective opinion from a judge.
Piracy is a socially responsible thing to do these days, when MS reportedly helps persecuting and killing people. IBM of 2020s.
> and killing people.

I wasn't aware of that, what are you referring to?

It's Abandonware, isn't it?
AFAIK That is not a valid legal defense in the US. But I'd love to be proven wrong.
Always have been
Imagine if we actually discussed hacking!
Gosh the horror!