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My desktop PC is 100% Windows 11-ready and from time to time I toy with the idea of upgrading to Windows 11 if only so I won’t have to do it under pressure when Windows 10 support is gone.   Then I read articles like this and the idea gets shelved.    I really wish the people who say they “like” Windows 11 would give me a reason to upgrade other than generalizations like “it’s faster” (sic).

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Charlie

I purchased a “cheap” license for Office 2021 Professional Plus for $40 from ghacks.net several months ago.   It activated without any problems and so far everything is working.   I learned about this on another online forum and nobody on that forum is reporting any issues.

I’ve yet to hear or read a single compelling reason to upgrade to Windows 11 so I’m staying on Windows 10 (which is running fine) until I have to upgrade for reasons outside of my control.   This upgrade truly seems like a downgrade to me.

Does pausing updates also pause Windows Defender updates?

My employer (financial institution) regularly sends us “phishing tests” to see if we’re paying attention to these hazards.   Maybe more companies should do this.   Hearing things like this over and over again is disheartening.    We worry about our privacy with Google and Microsoft; meanwhile, hackers are stealing our credentials with seemingly relative ease.

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WSbfjonas

WCHS wrote:

OldMainframeGuy wrote:

Thanks for the advice! Searching for “Offline install” I found a Microsoft article that explained what to do; you log into your Office account, select “Install”, and when asked what kind of install to do, select “offline installer”.

Hi @OldMainFrameGuy (Rob),
I did the same as you, finding the Microsoft article, and following the instructions as you describe. I found my Office 2016 under the ‘Services & Subscriptions’ tab in my Microsoft Account. The Product Key was listed there, too. When I clicked on the “Install” link, “Offline installer” was a choice.

What does the “Offline installer” do? Does it create an .iso file? If so, where can you put this .iso file – burn it to a DVD (if so, single layer? Double layer?), or copy it on a flash drive (how large?), or copy it to an external drive? Is there a setup.exe file? If so, what about the bitedness – is there an option to select this, when running the setup.exe?

The “offline installer” is a disk image file (ProPlus2021Retail.img) for Office 2021; 4.4GB which can be burned to a single-layer DVD.

 

 

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WCHS

Thanks for the advice!   Searching for “Offline install” I found a Microsoft article that explained what to do; you log into your Office account, select “Install”, and when asked what kind of install to do, select “offline installer”.

 

Rob

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WCHS

Thanks for the information; it’s a retail license.  I have my software key (25 characters) and an OfficeSetup.exe file which is the way I originally installed the product; it downloads and installs it.   I’m trying to figure out if there’s a way to get an actual installation media (ISO); so far, it seems that the only way this product installs is via a download process.

Rob

Peter:  How do you move a license (or reinstall it)?   Does it need to be uninstalled first?   Can I just reinstall Office on the same PC (if I was reinstalling Windows) or install it on a new PC, given that I would no longer be using the original PC?

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WCHS

Thank you; I feel better now.  I’m still not sure how these vendors can sell licenses at such deep discounts but everybody says they’re valid so I won’t look for trouble where there is none.

Rob

Results:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16>powershell -ep unrestricted -nop -c “iex .\vNextDiag.ps1”

========== Mode per ProductReleaseId ==========
proplus2021retail = vNext

========== Shared Computer Licensing ==========
No registry keys found.

========== vNext licenses found ==========
No licenses found.

========== Device licenses found ==========
{
“Version”: “Perpetual”,
“Type”: “Device|Perpetual”,
“Product”: “ProPlus2021Retail”,
“Acid”: “8d77de46-78fb-428d-b8c4-c4a078e8912d”,
“DeviceId”: null,
“LicenseState”: “Licensed”,
“EntitlementStatus”: “Provisioned”,
“EntitlementExpiration”: “9999-12-31T23:59:59.9999999Z”,
“ReasonCode”: null,
“NotBefore”: “2022-02-11T17:12:33.6834174Z”,
“NotAfter”: “2023-02-12T17:12:33.6834174Z”,
“NextRenewal”: “2022-03-14T22:12:33.6834174Z”,
“TenantId”: null,
“LicenseId”: “CWW_a96564f5-a835-4822-9f93-9ffd8ac81c04_a96564f5-a835-4822-9f93-9ffd8ac81c04_badbbf135ea84a878ebccdca0a1da491:ee1c516292d4f4e766”
}

How should I interpret this?  It seems less ominous that the previous results.

Rob

 

 

I bought a $49 license for Office 2021 from ghacks.net.   Everything seems to be working OK but when I ran the cscript command I saw this:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16>cscript ospp.vbs /dstatus
Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.812
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

—Processing————————–
—————————————
PRODUCT ID: 00469-80000-00000-AA967
SKU ID: cd18ecc0-466a-45d4-8d2e-8c4fa48ae591
LICENSE NAME: Office 21, Office21ProPlus2021R_Grace edition
LICENSE DESCRIPTION: Office 21, RETAIL(Grace) channel
LICENSE STATUS: —NOTIFICATIONS—
ERROR CODE: 0xC004F009
ERROR DESCRIPTION: The Software Licensing Service reported that the grace period expired.
Last 5 characters of installed product key: PG343
—————————————
—————————————
—Exiting—————————–

Any idea if this is just going to stop running?   I can’t imagine that Microsoft would allow ghacks.net to sell $49 licenses if it was illegal or shady but you never know.

 

While I don’t share your views on Windows 10 I completely share your views on Windows 11 – change for the sake of change with no regard to functionality.

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Microfix, MHCLV941

I purchased a laptop from System76 many years ago. No problems with the company or the laptop but I think they’re overpriced. You won’t be unhappy with your purchase but you will be spending more than you need to. As others have posted, buy a reasonably priced laptop and install Linux on it.

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Cybertooth

I have an older iPhone 7; the only thing that seems to drain the battery – alarmingly fast – is the News app.  You can watch the battery drain while you’re using it even if you’re not viewing a news article with sound or video.   It’s a company-supplied phone and other apps like Outlook don’t seem to have that problem.