I have always bought surplussed business hardware, which back in the day came with COA stickers still attached. My latest iron had two attached for some strange reason. So when Windows 10 came along with its “Upgrade Win 7 key to 10” plan, I fired up a VM (for this exact purpose) and went to work. Now (after moving them to 10 and then 11) I have a handful of Win11 Pro licenses for whatever machine I need to license.

Slowly moving away from Windows due to their AI and spyware shenanigans, but hey. Likely always will run at least one Windows rig, even if I have to spend the first day or two after install castrating it.