After reading a few articles and watching youtubes on this topic I came to understand that the only negatives to using Windows 10 un-activated is that you can not use personalisation to change the wallpaper, and that after a month there would be a watermark about activating windows shown on the desktop. However, a new wallpaper can be set by right clicking on the wallpaper - surely a softly softly move by Microsoft!
This all differs hugely from the days of Windows 98 where you had to put in a product key to even install the product, and in XP where the WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) would essentially cripple XP after a certain time if it wasn't activated.
So, do you think MS. might be thinking about making Windows 10S totally free, or even making Windows 10 Home, free as well?
At the moment I am having a play with running a Windows 10 Pro guest in Virtual box on my Xubuntu system and it's working surprisingly well seeing I only have 4gb of ram. After installing the guest additions it runs in full screen very nicely. So far I am only seeing polite reminders about getting it activated.
I've been able to sign up for a MS account & it's fully updated to Windows 10 1809.