Quote:
Originally Posted by ashlar42
But still, nevcariel, what you write can't be considered a good long term strategy. The free upgrade policy to Win 10 represented a potential money saver for lots of people. To stay with Win 8.1 (which I used and was satisfied with) meant being forced in the future to spend $199 in the future. That's the money you spend for a decent GPU. You can't be too hard with people that did not want to stick with 8.1, in my opinion.  |
Once you have upgraded to Window 10 on a computer, the license will ALWAYS work on that machine, even if you do a clean reinstall. You simply have to install Windows 10 saying that you don't have a serial number, and once it's installed to activate it. Windows will recognize your PC and will fully activate it.
So once you've done the free upgrade, nothing prevents from your wiping out your Windows 10 install, install Windows 8.1 for now, and re-install Windows 10 at a later stage (for free) whenever HDR support is more stable.
I'm seriously considering doing this on my HTPC. I'm not installing to Fall Creators update, but if Windows forces it on me and HDR doesn't work even with older drivers, I'll definitely go back to win 8.1 (even if on a second SSD with a dual boot).
The main drawback of 8.1 in a mixed gaming/HTPC machine is the loss of DirectX 12, but the main advantage is to get native MCE back.
As video playback is a lot more important to me than gaming, I'll go back to 8.1 is MS forces me to. I've done the free upgrade to Windows 10 on all my PCs knowing that I could go back and forth if needed, provided the hardware doesn't change too significantly (for example a change of two of mainboard/GPU/system drive would probably require a manual activation that might be refused). That's why I upgraded my GPU before reverting to 8.1 if needed, makes it possible to change the hard drive without activation issues).