It's also the direction Microsoft has been slowly moving Windows. You think it'd be bad if your router stopped working when you stopped paying, imagine the same scenario for your operating system.

MS is very aggressive with this in their Windows 10 development VM images you can download. Theyre free, but they only last 3 months. There doesnt appear to be anyway to activate - even if you have a legit license key through my.visualstudio.com.

The VM prebuilt with VStudio, Visual Studio Code, WSL w/ Ubuntu and other goodies in a prebuilt image is attractive and a time saver. But, it's immediately on a kill switch timer of about 3 months, if you download while new. Current image expires in Feb 2020.

I was using this to connect to work in a VPN in an effort to keep work and personal separate, but I'll have to burn a Win10 license key from my subscription for a new VM.

Caveat: the expiration doesnt render the image entirely worthless, but it will only stay up for around 90 mins before shutting down without warning.

I just take a snapshot then revert after 90 days. Seems to work. I vaguely remember MS docs suggesting this.

You can also refresh them with a powershell command a limited number of times IIRC.

I think it was in the instructions for using the Internet Explorer/Edge VMs (see page 3): https://az792536.vo.msecnd.net/vms/release_notes_license_ter...

There is ways of keeping it up. The one I can explain here, is to do a snapshot as soon as you have your apps setup, then just roll back at the end. There is "other" ways that I can't explain here.

I'm not sure what you mean. Windows 10 is far less aggressive about activation than previous versions. It puts a little disapproving watermark on the desktop and nothing else.

It's certainly unappealing to me as an individual, but I am sure plenty of businesses wouldn't even blink at paying an ongoing charge like that (as long as the router in question was getting timely patches etc.)

Unfortunately, as of 6 years ago, no one else had a competing product that saved me as much time as Meraki did. It was well worth the extra thousands.

Thing is, the price isn't crazy low compared to competitors. It's for people who are confused and don't have the technical knowledge to do something like install the unifi controller software on a debian server. If you're scared of command lines, meraki is the product for you.

6 years ago, Meraki access points were a few hundred each, and security appliances were a couple thousand, plus a hundred to a thousand per year in subscription fees. But I paid to, because ever since we did, we didn’t have to touch it, and install was a breeze. Well worth the time savings.