Microsoft fixes Windows 8 Rs. 699 upgrade loophole

Early yesterday, word spread that Microsoft's $15 upgrade offer for Windows 8 had a loophole that would allow anyone to get the new OS for dirt cheap. Well, the boys at Redmond were quick to catch on and have patched the loophole.

Microsoft has extended an offer to those who had bought Windows 7 machines after June 2, 2012, allowing them to get the new OS for just $15 as against the regular $40 price. All users had to do was go to the offer website and fill in their details along with the brand, model and date of purchase of their machine and following that, Microsoft would dispatch a promo code to the supplied email which would offer the whopping discount in the purchase stage. It didn't matter whether these details were correct or not, but as long as all the fields were filled in and the date of purchase was post June 2nd 2012, you were on your way to a really cheap upgrade.

Microsoft caught on real quick, perhaps due to a surge in people availing the offer or maybe someone tipped them off. But now, once the initial details are submitted, MS wants you to verify your purchase by entering the license key for your existing copy of Windows, for which it checks the activation date to verify that you qualify for the offer.

We're not really sure how long this loophole has been open, perhaps from the very beginning or maybe it was a glitch that developed in the last few days. We could also postulate that this was a deliberate oversight from Ballmer's crew to ensure many buyers for the new OS, as its better to sell the OS at $15 than have virtually half their user base pirate it. But according to the official Microsoft terms of agreement for the offer, it is strictly for those who have purchased a licensed Windows machine post June 2. Bottom-line is, if you are still hoping to score a cheaper than cheap copy of Windows 8 for your machine, you can't.



