It can’t be legitimate because licences for the bundled software cost more than the machines are being sold for. Also, the hardware included isn’t officially Windows 11 compatible, so selling it with Windows 11 installed is misleading the customer into thinking they’re buying something much more recent than they really are. For a decent number of people buying these, they’re likely to own something just as new already, and could get a free upgrade to Windows 11 by doing the same configuration tweaks as the sellers did.
abfarid@startrek.website 3 weeks ago
Do you mean you wouldn’t consider it a scam if it has W10 preinstalled instead? How much is MS Office anyway? I know there are $5 W11 keys all over the place.
AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The $5 Windows keys have never been legitimate - either they’re just people selling keys they’ve generated with a keygen or bought with a stolen credit card, or it’s students reselling free keys they’ve got from Dreamspark or a sysadmin selling keys from their employer’s enterprise licence, which, in Microsoft’s eyes, are all piracy. An OEM copy of Windows 11 Pro is about €150 and can’t be transferred to a different motherboard, and a retail copy which can be transferred is about €300. A one-time purchase copy of Office is about €120 (it’s also available as a subscription). These machines either have at least €270 of software on them, or €0 worth of pirated software on them.
abfarid@startrek.website 3 weeks ago
What does it matter that Microsoft considers it piracy? If they got the keys for cheap somewhere, it’s a real licensed version anyway and will work fine.
I can order retro emulation handhelds from China and it will arrive with 1000s of ROMs, which is literal piracy, but that doesn’t make it a scam.