{"id":6925,"date":"2014-01-29T20:48:57","date_gmt":"2014-01-30T01:48:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/?p=6925"},"modified":"2014-01-29T20:48:57","modified_gmt":"2014-01-30T01:48:57","slug":"how-to-try-windows-8-1-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/how-to-try-windows-8-1-free\/","title":{"rendered":"How to try Windows 8.1 free"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you don&#8217;t already have Windows 8 and want to try out the latest version of Windows free, you can do so right now. The trial is valid for 90 days. But please, please, please, do not install this as your primary operating system. Best option? Download the free VMWare Player and create a virtual machine &#8212; it&#8217;s easy to do and keeps Windows 8.1 separate from your primary operating system. Another option is to use dual boot, but we don&#8217;t think that option is a good choice, since in 90 days you&#8217;d have to remove Windows 8.1 or sit there and choose operating systems at Windows start up &#8212; or wait 30 seconds for the automatic boot into your primary operating system. If our readers show enough interest in creating a virtual Windows machine using VMWare Player, we&#8217;ll do a picture tutorial for you. How about it? Are enough of you interested? (You can also run Windows XP in a virtual machine and not have to worry about security issues. If the virtual machine is attacked, just delete it and create a new one. It&#8217;s that easy.).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/technet.microsoft.com\/en-us\/evalcenter\/hh699156.aspx\">The download is available from Microsoft her<\/a>e. While you can between the 32- or 64-bit versions, this version of Windows 8.1 comes in one flavor, and that flavor is Windows 8.1 Enterprise Edition &#8211; Captain Jean-luc Picard commanding :-). Keep in mind that this is a huge 3 GB + download and it will take some time to download. Oh yes, you&#8217;ll need a Microsoft account too &#8211; which is a Hotmail, Outlook.com, Live.com or Msn.com email account..<\/p>\n<p>After you install the trial, you will need to activate it. A product key is not required. You have 90 days to use the trial. You must activate your trial before 31 October 2014.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Cloudeight Internet\" src=\"http:\/\/thundercloud.net\/infoave\/images\/2014\/win81-enterprise.png\" width=\"600\" height=\"426\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>\nSetting up Windows 8.1 Enterprise on a Virtual Machine.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Cloudeight Internet\" src=\"http:\/\/thundercloud.net\/infoave\/images\/2014\/win81-enterprise1.png\" width=\"600\" height=\"426\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>\nWindows 8.1 Enterprise installer finishing up.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Cloudeight Internet\" src=\"http:\/\/thundercloud.net\/infoave\/images\/2014\/win81-enterprise3.png\" width=\"600\" height=\"324\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>\nWindows 8.1 Enterprise running in a virtual machine.<\/p>\n<p>And after your trial expires, you can renew it 4 additional times &#8212; meaning you can use it for 360 days. We&#8217;ll show you how soon.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you don&#8217;t already have Windows 8 and want to try out the latest version of Windows free, you can do so right now. The trial is valid for 90 days. But please, please, please, do not install this as your primary operating system. Best option? Download the free VMWare Player and create a virtual machine &#8212; it&#8217;s\u2026 <span class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/how-to-try-windows-8-1-free\/\">Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6925"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6925"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6926,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6925\/revisions\/6926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}