One hates to admit being the victim of a scam but if my story saves someone else from the same experience I can live with the shame ...
I bought a new (?) Lenovo T480 from Bluetech Computers, a small retail store in Bellville (address : 79 Barnard St, Oakdale), for a good price about a year ago, with a copy of Windows 10 installed. Recently, I wanted to query the warranty status as the battery appeared to be playing up and received my first unpleasant surprise - there was no Lenovo warranty on the machine. Apparently Lenovo does sometimes sell machines without warranty.
The second unpleasant surprise occurred a couple of weeks ago, when the Windows started asking for a product key. I was a mystified as I had extracted a product key from the machine previously. However when I used this key I was warned that I would need to be connected to my "...organization's activation server...", which of course I don't have. I concluded that Bluetech had installed Windows using some organization's volume licence key (perhaps their own ?) which has now expired. They have offered to "reactivate" Windows but I'm confident I shall be in the same position in a year's time.
I should have been warned by the absence of the serial number and Windows stickers on the machine - the joys of hindsight. On the upside it is an excellent machine and I did save a lot of money - but I should have asked harder where the savings came from.
Anyway I've been looking for a legitimate Windows licence - am not willing either to hack it or to pay the full retail. I note there's any number of people offering Windows 10 Pro product keys, which are not OEM, System Builder or Volume keys, for R200 and less and was wondering how these are obtained and whether they're legitimate. If anyone has an insight into this market I would be interested to hear the details.
I bought a new (?) Lenovo T480 from Bluetech Computers, a small retail store in Bellville (address : 79 Barnard St, Oakdale), for a good price about a year ago, with a copy of Windows 10 installed. Recently, I wanted to query the warranty status as the battery appeared to be playing up and received my first unpleasant surprise - there was no Lenovo warranty on the machine. Apparently Lenovo does sometimes sell machines without warranty.
The second unpleasant surprise occurred a couple of weeks ago, when the Windows started asking for a product key. I was a mystified as I had extracted a product key from the machine previously. However when I used this key I was warned that I would need to be connected to my "...organization's activation server...", which of course I don't have. I concluded that Bluetech had installed Windows using some organization's volume licence key (perhaps their own ?) which has now expired. They have offered to "reactivate" Windows but I'm confident I shall be in the same position in a year's time.
I should have been warned by the absence of the serial number and Windows stickers on the machine - the joys of hindsight. On the upside it is an excellent machine and I did save a lot of money - but I should have asked harder where the savings came from.
Anyway I've been looking for a legitimate Windows licence - am not willing either to hack it or to pay the full retail. I note there's any number of people offering Windows 10 Pro product keys, which are not OEM, System Builder or Volume keys, for R200 and less and was wondering how these are obtained and whether they're legitimate. If anyone has an insight into this market I would be interested to hear the details.
