Buy a $140/$200 retail Windows 11 Home/Pro license with a credit card and make $7/$10 monthly payments. At around 20% APR, you'll end up with a perpetual licens

Buy a $140/$200 retail Windows 11 Home/Pro license with a credit card and make $7/$10 monthly payments. At around 20% APR, you'll end up with a perpetual license paid off in about two years that'll likely be useful for far longer than that. For example, I'm currently using a retail Windows 7 Home Premium ($200) license upgraded to Windows 8 Pro ($100) in 2012 to run Windows 10 (free upgrade) on a fairly recent PC that's fully supported by Windows 11 (another free upgrade whenever I choose to do so). On the linked page, Microsoft is only giving away an evaluation copy that, per the license terms[1], can't be used "in a live operating environment", which presumably includes ongoing use as a development system. With that said, a $10/month consumer Windows Pro subscription for VMs and PCs that don't ship with OEM Windows, while niche, would probably net Microsoft at least as much as retail sales to the same market, so you're not wrong. [1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/UseTerms/Retail/Windows/11/UseTerms_Retail_Windows_11_English.htm https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/UseTerms/Retail/Windows/11/U...