[boomboomsubban]

>I'm not sure what would have happened if I had been a purely MacOS and Linux household.

Passthrough to a VM, though I suppose the Windows license could be an issue.

[jabbany]

Actually, since Win 10 you can run the OS indefinitely without a license. It just doesn't allow you to customize stuff like the wallpaper etc.

Ref: https://www.howtogeek.com/244678/you-dont-need-a-product-key...

[BenjiWiebe]

You can run Windows 7 indefinitely without a license, too.

You get a nag every now and then, and the desktop background keeps resetting to black. Can't remember if there's a watermark as well (10 has a watermark).

[Arrath]

I had myself a hearty laugh recently when I was in Vegas and the casino elevator wall screen panels had the ACTIVATE WINDOWS banner overlaid on the videos.

[AniseAbyss]

I see pre built PCs come with free demo version of win11. They expect you to crack it yourself.

Microsoft stopped giving a shit about piracy from consumers. Its a far cry from the days when windows cost €300.

[jabbany]

With all the ads they shove in your face you'd think they'd just make the OS free at this point.

[tzs]

I don't know if this is changed with Window 11 but 10 and earlier let you go a while between installation and entering a license key, at least for the consumer editions, so licensing should not be a problem.

The big issue with a VM approach in this specific case was that this was before Macs switched to Intel processors. My Mac was had PowerPC.

A VM might have worked on my Linux machine, although my recollection is that back then (early 2000s) VM passthrough was not very sophisticated. I remember trying Windows VMs for a few firmware things that involved proprietary vendor commands and finding that it was hit and miss.

[pixl97]

You can download 180 day trials of Windows server from Microsoft, no license needed.