Windows 10 can be downloaded and used for free directly from the Microsoft website. To get all the features, however, you need to activate it: here's how you do it
Microsoft Windows is the most widely used PC operating system in the world, for over twenty years now. And for over twenty years Microsoft has had to deal with the problem of illegal, "cracked" licenses. Many people, in fact, want to use Windows but don't want to pay for it. That's why, starting with Windows 10, Microsoft has changed its policy.
The latest version of Microsoft's operating system, in fact, can be downloaded and installed for free directly from the site of the Redmond company. What you download, however, is a kind of demo version that must then be "activated" through a key, linked to a single license. The Web is full of sites from which to download the illegal "Product Key" of Windows, but in the vast majority of cases are keys that do not work and, very often, along with the key is also downloaded a nice virus. There are also those who never activate a Windows 10 license and continue to use the free version of the operating system. But that's a big mistake.
Why it's better to activate Windows 10
The free, non-activated version of Windows 10 is not complete at all: it lacks some useful features such as dark mode, Windows Defender, Windows Hello and the "Focus Assist", i.e. the notification assistant. But that's not all: if the Windows version we're using hasn't been activated yet, the operating system won't be able to download the security updates needed to keep the PC safe from malware infections and hacker attacks.
Two types of Windows 10 licenses
Once you understand that you need to activate Windows 10 as soon as possible, buying an official license, it's useful to ask yourself what type of license to buy. Because there are two of them: Windows Home and Windows Pro. Windows Home is undoubtedly the most recommended for an average user because it has most of the most used features. The Pro license, on the other hand, adds features that are only useful in a strictly business environment and in case our PC is connected to many others in a corporate network.
How to activate Windows 10
You don't need to activate Windows 10 if you find it already preinstalled on your computer: the hardware manufacturer has taken care of that. If, on the other hand, we buy a license online or in a computer store, then we have in our hands a 25-character product key that we have to communicate to the operating system so that Windows 10 gets activated. To do this we'll have to go to Settings > Update and Security > Activation.