Okay, being Texas, the Geek was alive and well on a Sunday.
"The Key is imbedded in the motherboard. You no longer have to put in a key."
He says, they plug in a DVD player. (has to be external as this thing is as thin as a razor blade.) and load W8. The software looks at that particular computer and okays it . . . or not.
So, I need to download it or get a DVD attachment, $39 on the big river, and then make a stick to carry if I don't want to lug the DVD. Okay, doable. Then I have to roll back the soft to W7 to get back to where I am. (don't need Ultimate.)
This should do two things. A, get me kosher with MS, and it seems logical that law enforcement folk would feed stolen kit into a MS database and wait for it to be registered. I wonder if that happens.
Right, now to see what Asus say about it. May have to wait 'till Monday for that.