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Comment by polotics | Hacker News Reader

Never again windows with Microsoft accounts. I have two windows 10 licenses, one home and one pro. I made the mistake of associating the licenses to my Microsoft account and now there is no way to move the pro license from the old PC to the new one. The Microsoft support site is a complete joke of unpaid chatterers that send you on wild goose chase, the web is full of SEO bullshit site that keyword-dance around the issue... Windows 11 for me is Windows Never, and I am well under to way to ensure that the 100 odd laptops at $company run Ubuntu next thank you very much.

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This is not true at all, you can transfer the license. Unless it was an OEM license and is tied to the hardware. It has nothing to do with your MS account. I've done this many times when upgrading hardware for myself and my family using different combinations of Home/Pro licenses.

I actually added mine to my Microsoft account specifically because it made it easier/safer to move the license to a new installation (new hard drive, in my case). You just do a base installation with physical media, sign in, and you’re good to go.

Thank You nightski. These are not OEM licenses, I bought the Windows Pro one fair and square and full. Can you send a link to an how to? I do confirm that I could not do it there was nothing on the MS license site that lets me do the switch. Nothing I confirm.

Also no warning or any information to the effect that something is being prevented because of an OEM situation. Just no way to switch the two licenses between the two PC's.

Abou nine years ago I bought a Windows 8 Pro license that was upgraded to 10 and now 11 for free. It was transfered between 4 or 5 machines including one virtual machine.

Perhaps your license is OEM?

Thanks for the heads up on not associating my win 10 pro license with a cloud account!

Can't you just deactivate the Home license and then install Pro? Or just try installing Pro then deactivating the Home license? I only have Pro keys attached to my account but I've shuffled them about between different computers.

is it OEM license? you can't transfer OEM license to another machine. i have retail Win10 and i have no problem transfer it.

Congratulations, you've just created an IT nightmare. By forgoing the easy configurability of Outlook, Exchange, and Active Directory, you've added an untold amount to the TCO of your laptop fleet and IT infrastructure! You've also created problems down the line as it's more difficult to procure endpoint security and whitelisting solutions for Linux than for Mac or Windows. There's a reason why enterprises choose Microsoft time and time again: it works, it's easy to configure and administer at scale.

Do you know why Warren Buffett's company is called Berkshire Hathaway and not, say, Buffett Holdings? Berkshire Hathaway was a textile company Buffett had invested in, whose CEO pissed him off so completely that he bought the entire company just to fire that CEO. It's a decision he regrets because the money he used to buy Berkshire could have been used to invest in profitable insurance companies. Untold billions left on the table.

Moral: Don't make critical business decisions while assmad.

Agree about not making decisions when mad but aren't there good options beyond MS for the things you mentioned. Gsuite or any number of other office + mail providers can replace outlook. AD is useless these days unless you have Windows machines to administer or may be with azure cloud which by all accounts sucks when compared to gcp/aws.

So what would an organisation miss when leaving windows ecosystem to lets say mac or Linux.

Outlook, Exchange and Active Directory? These are buggy software packages from the 1990's right? We've been off the lot for the longest time now. The PTSD is even almost gone.

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