News Windows 11 local account workaround discovered just as Microsoft closes previous loophole in Insider Build

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It is effectively "free".

People buy a new PC, it comes preinstalled. You don't see an individual line item on your receipt for "Windows OS".
And the vast majority of windows users do it with a prebuilt.

The small number of DIY builders...can upgrade their current Win 10 license, for free.

Single Win 10 or 11 licenses make up a tiny tiny portion of MS profits.
Funny thing is, the worse a country's economy gets the less people care about how "legal" their software is so Windows generally just gets accepted to be "free" in some places. Ironically this means low Linux adoption.

For that reason alone nvm relative internet unreliability Win11 could mean a drastic loss of market share in some regions if the forced live accounts thing actually becomes unbypassable.

First world economies just don't seem to understand that there is absolutely no reason that you can expect a completely reliable internet connection all the time and it's not unusual everywhere to have no internet for large stretches of time.
 
Linux is still easier to install than Windows.
DOS was much easier than that: you'd just add "/s" to your "format <drive-letter>:" and it was all done for you.

RSTS and RSX-11 were pretty much the same, don't think CP/M was much of a bother, either, while installing from QIC tapes on VMS or System V.2/3 was a bit of a bother, still much better than putting in a boot-strap via console switches on an early PDPs with magnetic core memory and the rest via teletype paper tape or punch cards.

And actually I find that Windows today is much easier to just copy onto any target and then have it re-configure itself at boot.

I typically just install Windows once per major release and then just copy it on all the other machines via Paragon or Clonezilla and have it sort itself out with one or two reboots.

That used to be quite a bother in the olden days when Windows NT systems with the same UUID wouldn't want to talk to each other on these finger thick "Ether-somethings", that were blocking all the doors...

Apart from variants like Knoppix it's never been that easy with Linux or any other Unix that I recall (Xenix for the 8086 with some discrete TTL MMU was the first I installed), nor obviously with Windows NT & family before installations just became cloning.
 
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