Windows 10 Home & Pro Legit Licenses

[jonah8208]

I need to buy some Win 10 Home & Pro keys - not as easy as it used to be though.

I have been out of the PC building game for a couple of years now because I got a pretty good job in govt IT and I am more inclined to play Elite Dangerous these days than fix people's PC disaster areas for next to nothing in my spare time, but recently I have been asked to re-build a PC for a mate, nothing special but he wants me to build him a custom PC rather than buy off the shelf. The last time I did this sort of thing Win10 was free upgrade from 7 or 8, now it appears confused. For eg a few weeks back I upgraded one of my own Win8.1 pro boxes to Win10 Pro via the upgrade tool - it installed and activated without any problems did not even ask for a key (I had one though) but I need to do clean installs on a couple of new machines and I need them to be entirely legit.

I can buy a legit product key from MSFT  for win 10 Home or Pro for £98, or £198 respectively.
I can buy a boxed version on a USB key from Amazon for £78
I can buy a product key from Amazon via email for £9.98.

(not sure if I can post links here but if you want to look stick Windows 10 in Amazon UK.)

The first version is obviously legit but a bit pricey for something they gave away in the first place.

The other 2 are seemingly legit being offered on Amazon with amazon fullfilling the orders but the feedback shows that for the £9.98 key only via email, most of the keys are pre-used and will not activate although the seller keeps sending a new key till you get one that works.  The £78 version on a USB key in a box has no feedback yet but I suspect it is the same thing with a very expensive 4Gb USB included so I am discounting this as an option altogether

So my question(s)

Does anybody know what the £9.98 emailed keys are exactly - I am presuming recycled OEM keys?
Anybody know of a good source of legitimate Windows 10 Home and Pro keys at a more reasonable price than the official MSFT price?

tia

Jonah

[Tripredacus]

There really shouldn't be any price fluctuation on buying the OS, Partners typically have to just sell it for a set price and that is it. I can say for certain that a company who is reselling the System Builder Kit will not be selling it lower than cost. It is an expensive product still and the online prices are usually at or perhaps 1% above cost.

For the version where you just get a product key, the email should be coming from Microsoft so the keys should not be recycled. If they actually were OEM keys instead of retail, you'd be able to tell by doing a licensing check. Since OEM, VL and Retail are generated differently, the licensing tool can tell you which type of key is it. The reason why keys from a legit source would not work would be because someone, somewhere had already used that key to activate a Windows 10 previously, I'm sure we are all aware of how that is accomplished.

When I look onto Newegg, it only shows the three options: "OEM" which I presume is the SBK, "Download" and USB Flash drive:

https://www.newegg.com/Operating-Systems/SubCategory/ID-368

I also would imagine that a physical Retail kit must exist, but perhaps that is not sold online and only in physical stores.