MBW 858: Leave the Knife In

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you do not need to buy a license if you have some OEM-Windows key.
I was able to register Windows 11onARM with old oem-keys from Windows8 :smile: which where free to all Windows7 upgrader

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There may be some confusion here. OEM keys come pre-installed on the PC and are usually on a sticker permanently attached to the PC (or even inside the PC in some cases.) Not in every case, but frequently they will actually have “OEM” in the key. Since the OEM buys in bulk and pays much less for the keys, they’re locked to a device when activated. It’s all very confusing with the changes to Windows 10, because they were so desperate to get people to upgrade they didn’t fully enforce their own rules.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/what-does-oem-mean/9cd1f882-65e7-4946-812e-d1e8b1823f43

Back in the days when windows 8 came out you could request a windows 8 license from Microsoft when you have a windows 7 license. I have done this and was able to activate my windows 11 arm with this old windows 8 license.

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It depends on your market. Microsoft lost a court case in Germany, in which they tried to argue that an OEM is somebody like Dell. Enthusiasts who build their own computers argued that by definition, they are OEMs, the court agreed and Microsoft has to sell an OEM (or Systembuilder as it is called in German) lincese to anybody who wants one.

Another cheap way to get a license is from people reselling bulk corporate licenses. A company will buy, say, 1,500 licenses under SA, to get the next discount level, but only need 1,400, so they sell on the surplus licenses to a re-seller, who offers them cheap. Again, the German courts decided this was perfectly legal. But you have to watch out, if you buy one of these licenses and another person who bought “a” license then activates it on half a dozen machines, the license will no longer activate, once the total number of activations has been reached - the seller will usually just issue a second key, but it is still frustrating.

For what it’s worth, you can actually run Windows without a license. I installed Boot Camp on an old iMac mostly to run Steam and it’s running fine. It will disable some features, like personalizing your settings. Supposedly you’ll get some nagware popups about buying a license, but I haven’t run into that so far.

I’m probably upgrading to a MacMini Pro M2 in the next weeks or so, so when that arrives, I’m probably going to get a copy of Parallels and see if Windows 11 follows suit.

My oem licenses are officially from Microsoft. They were issued for free for every one in the first 30 days when windows 8 came out. So I got two of them

I’ve been able to use windows 7 license keys to activate windows 10 and 11 read off the bottom of a laptop. I have a feeling M$ doesn’t really care about licenses, your data they’re mining I’m sure is more valuable.

To Alex’s comments about Mac gaming - World of Warcraft runs natively on Apple Silicon, and I even run it on my Studio, but it’s not winning any awards compared to what PCs can do. I’m sure there’s games that can showcase Apple’s power, but he’s right we definitely haven’t seen it yet.

But more importantly, high-end graphics are not what makes a good game. Way too many developers fall into that trap. The most fun games I’ve ever played have avoided the “super realistic” and/or “high end” graphics engines. Old Nintendo games are still popular, and “Among Us” is such a simple game that works so well!

It’s Apple. I don’t trust their platform because I (and other gamers) have been burnt plenty of times. You can’t abandon old technologies and expect every game studio to keep up forever. Lots of games I bought for the Mac don’t run anymore because they were x86, 32-bit apps.

One important market for windows on a Mac is for CAD. I run solidworks 2022 on a M1 Max Mac and it is pretty fast. I think it is faster than my maxed out last generation Intel Mac. My co-worker has a high end lenovo that will run solidworks for less than an hour on battery. I have run close to six hours.

Being able to work on CAD anywhere while traveling to remote contract manufacturers is an absolute requirement. Getting a replacement laptop anywhere in the world is also a hard requirement.

Installing solidworks is always a chore but i have a guide that should help. Al some one should pick Shapr3D a great native CAD for Ipad, Mac and PCc.

I will say though, when I can run xplane on apple silicon at 40fps or greater. It’s pretty remarkable, all integrated graphic processing. Not a big gamer myself but eager to see if anything catches my eyes that’s native to the M1