Good value

Great purchase

What can you say, it's an OS. It installs and it works. Cheaper would be nicer.

I am 78 year old retired software engineer, who loves Linux. Been stuck on a laptop with a small hard drive, without enough room to have a dual boot system. Stuck writing a book using Word, that is now close to being finished. I wanted Linux back, and I still wanted to keep Windows.

I bought a bare bone MINISFORUM Venus Series UM790 Pro Mini PC , added Crucial RAM 96GB Kit (2x48GB) DDR5 5600MT/s (or 5200MT/s or 4800MT/s) Laptop Memory, a fanxiang S880 4TB NVMe SSD, and a fanxiang S880 2TB NVMe SSD, for a really fast and cool running 5 inch by 5 inch by 2 inch computer. More computer power than an old tower, that will drive two big 32 inch 4 k monitors, and save electricity too.

I thought about getting a product key cheap from the internet, but felt that is a bit unethical. I did not want to pay $199 from Microsoft but felt that $153.42 from Amazon was within my budget. I want Microsoft to get some money to keep protecting Windows 11 from hackers. so I downloaded Windows 11 Home, onto a 64 G jump drive, and installed an unactivated Windows 11 home system. I ran it for a week, making sure that everything worked while I still could return any hardware that broke. Everything worked just find. But I also went to youtube.com and learned about windows 11 Pro, with it's sandbox container. That looked interesting so I decided to upgrade from Home to Pro. Again, youtube helped me do that without downloading anything new, just adding a generic product key with my router turned off, and rebooting my system.

The final step was opening the Windows 11 Pro Disk I received from Amazon, After reading some of the reviews, I mistakenly thought it was under the red tape holding the envelope together. I was very careful, using only my finger nails. but nothing at all was found. Instead, the product key is inside on a special sticker. Using only a dull fingernail I carefully scratched off a film covering the product code. The print is very very small. I needed a flashlight and a magnifying glass. I would think in this modern time, a cell phone could be used to do all the needed security layers. But this is to let people know, to have a magnifying glass handy, and do not scratch too hard. Once I entered the 25 digits, it activated in about 10 seconds. All is well, and I am happy to not have to do that too often.

I have a love hate going with Microsoft, but they keep coming back to the marketplace, saying in business, and coming up with new things for all us users. When I was 20, I would avoid their products at all costs, but now with old age helping me to mellow out. I think I can be friends with Microsoft. Peace brother.

Usb is way easier of an install then the disc I highly recommend it