Ask Paul: March 22 (Premium)

Happy Friday. There are some curiously serendipitous questions in this week’s Ask Paul.
Activation with a digital license
Darekmeridian asks:

Last weekend I did a clean install of Windows 10. I followed your guide (This is how I Configure Windows 10) and got a nice clean install (Thanks for the guide btw). Made an image as a base for going forward but there was one weird thing that I was wondering about at the step where you say "Activate Windows if needed" so I went to check if it did indeed need to be activated, but already indicated "Windows is activated with a digital license linked to your Microsoft account" This step is before the step when you actually "Sign-in with your Microsoft account" So my question is how does it know I'm activated if I haven't actually given it my MSA information yet? Or does activation not really matter anymore?

Activation does matter, but it’s much more seamless now than it used to be. Remember that what’s activated is “Windows on that particular PC” not “Windows attached to your MSA,” even though there is an association between your MSA and what is essentially a Windows product key plus a unique GUID that identifies that PC. So it activated because it matched the hardware configuration of your PC against its online database, making it valid. Yes, this means that you or someone else could then sign-in with a completely different MSA and it would just work. This would be useful if you sold the PC, for example. (I believe Microsoft has a way to transfer the license to another MSA. But that would likely involve a support phone call.)
Office 365 install and servicing
simont asks:

Office 365. Which is the better way to install it and keep it updated on a single user PC. From the Store or from the ISO/Executable?

Oddly enough, I’ve been wondering about this myself, though I thought/think of the two choices as “from the Store” and “from the Office 365 website.” So on recent new PCs and resets, I’ve been testing what a Store-based install is like and how it differs, if at all, from installing it “normally” (from the web).

And I’ve come to the conclusion that the best way to install it is via the Office 365 website. The reason is that Store-based updates don’t seem to be super-reliable, and the Store treats each app separately. So I’ve seen multiple Office desktop applications “stuck” in the Store’s Downloads queue multiple times, on different PCs.

For someone like me in particular, the web interface is also better because I often need to manage which PCs are associated with my account. So just going there for everything seems to make the most sense. (Granted, most people won’t have this issue.)

As an aside, it is possible and probably likely that the Store-based versions of the Office apps do not include 100 percent of the features in the versions you get from the web. I have never run into a problem there, personally, but others might. (I’m try...