Fair enough. Just always seemed like a weird repeated sticking point.

For anyone looking to buy it cheaper, look for OEM key resellers. It’s the discounted price for companies preinstalling Windows. You can only install it on one device though, instead of whatever “multiple install grace window” they allow normally.

For anyone wanting it for free, MASgrave utilizes some sort of loophole with an official licensing method meant for corporations to get Microsoft to grant you a valid official license key for free. Microsoft can’t go back and somehow differentiate these keys from paid legit ones, so there’s no risk. Just make sure you’re getting MASgrave from their official source on github so there isn’t any malware snuck in. It also has some functionality for Office licenses as well.

Also worth noting that with effort, you can excise the overwhelming majority of the anti-consumer bullshit from Windows. Not really accessible to the average joe though, real easy to break shit or not disable things properly so they get re-enabled through updates.

Normies don’t know what an OS is. I’d say there is not a single person that would actually pay the official price - but it’s nonetheless what M$ is asking for, implicating that’s what they think their Trojan is worth.

$160 for OEM Win 11 Pro, or $120 for OEM Win 11 Home. Just be careful because swapping hardware could break the license, and you’d need to call M$ to get it fixed.

Or just install w/o a license key and deal with the watermark (I assume it’s the same as w/ Win 10). That’s what I did since I primarily use Linux and only use Windows to test random stuff.

Holy shit, that’s wild lol. I’ve only been thinking about the Home version, which you can get around here for about 140 bucks at most 😅