I recently noticed that some sellers on Ebay are offering what appear to be authentic COAs for Windows 7, without media, for rather cheap prices -- as low as $25 or so. These are US sellers with enough very good-to-excellent feedback to seem generally trustworthy.
Will these work on a PC other than the one it was originally assigned to, with the Win7 isos that are, for the time being anyway, still available from Digital River? Without delving into any possible "ethical" issues of contract/EULA violation of which I will remain firmly and blissfully unaware whiste, all I really care about is not being deactivated if/when the OS "phones home." Especially at this point in its life-cycle, it's really not worth it to me to spend $100 on an OEM copy, but for $25-30, I might do it just for its new-toy-to-play-with value.
The back story, if you care.
My almost 6 year old Dell is still chugging away (with an Intel E7300 CPU, added RAM, newer SSD & HDD drives, and a graphics card.) Given that I'm not a gamer nor much of a video editor, it's basically fine for the time being. I'm still using the Vista Home Premium x64 OS it came with which, so far, has done everything I've needed it to do.
When Windows 7 came out, I didn't see much reason to upgrade the OS just for upgrading's sake. Even now, it's not worth much to upgrade. Since I hold on to computer equipment until it literally falls apart, I wouldn't mind having the extra couple of years until end-of-life from Win7 over Vista, but that's about the only serious reason I can think of to upgrade. As far as I've ever read, Windows 7 offers slightly better performance over Vista. But for my purposes, a small edge isn't worth $100.
(In case anyone might suggest Win8/8.1, I don't plan on buying/building a new computer for at least another 1-1½ years, by which time who knows what MS will have come up with, so I have no interest in buying a retail version of that OS with the idea of using it on a new build when the time comes.)
Will these work on a PC other than the one it was originally assigned to, with the Win7 isos that are, for the time being anyway, still available from Digital River? Without delving into any possible "ethical" issues of contract/EULA violation of which I will remain firmly and blissfully unaware whiste, all I really care about is not being deactivated if/when the OS "phones home." Especially at this point in its life-cycle, it's really not worth it to me to spend $100 on an OEM copy, but for $25-30, I might do it just for its new-toy-to-play-with value.
The back story, if you care.
My almost 6 year old Dell is still chugging away (with an Intel E7300 CPU, added RAM, newer SSD & HDD drives, and a graphics card.) Given that I'm not a gamer nor much of a video editor, it's basically fine for the time being. I'm still using the Vista Home Premium x64 OS it came with which, so far, has done everything I've needed it to do.
When Windows 7 came out, I didn't see much reason to upgrade the OS just for upgrading's sake. Even now, it's not worth much to upgrade. Since I hold on to computer equipment until it literally falls apart, I wouldn't mind having the extra couple of years until end-of-life from Win7 over Vista, but that's about the only serious reason I can think of to upgrade. As far as I've ever read, Windows 7 offers slightly better performance over Vista. But for my purposes, a small edge isn't worth $100.
(In case anyone might suggest Win8/8.1, I don't plan on buying/building a new computer for at least another 1-1½ years, by which time who knows what MS will have come up with, so I have no interest in buying a retail version of that OS with the idea of using it on a new build when the time comes.)