I wanted to thank you for your post. I had kind of written off Windows 10 LTSC IoT as probably not being a good solution for most folks... Legitimate licenses are not available through normal channels and there are some limitations. But overall, I can already report back that the licensing issue was not as much of a problem as I had thought that it might be. And most of the crap that has been stripped out of this version can be added back if that is what one really wants.
The enterprise edition can apparently even be used as a Hyper-V server, although I have not tested this yet. And it is actually working very well on my old laptop that I bought for parts several years ago. I think that I will be doing a separate thread on this sometime in the near future.
In the meantime, I am going to be rushing to setup each of my machines that are not good candidates for Windows 11 and acquiring licenses and linking them to a Microsoft account. I suspect that Microsoft will begin plugging the holes in this opportunity before they end support for most Windows installations.
The least time-consuming way to do this is to boot up with a Windows-To-Go Disk with Microsoft Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 installed on each of the machines that might need it. Then change the license key to one of the others that has been purchased. Then log into the Microsoft account that you want to associate it with. I will be linking all of my Microsoft Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 licenses to one account to keep things less confusing and make it look more like an actual business. My biggest concern is that the services providing keys for these installations will begin raising their prices as October 14 gets closer.
One has to remember that each of these computers will have to be set up with a clean install.
Glad that was helpful to you!! I used to buy LTSC VLKs (which can be converted to IoT after install) on Ebay for like $15/seat, but they seem to be drying up so I don’t have any sources I can recommend.