Painless transfer to a new PC

I have to admit, I had images of speaking with a Microsoft rep from India on the phone, crying and pleading
and begging. But, that just wasn't the case.

I have (had) a 5 year old PC that I upgraded to Windows 8 (and eventually 8.1) about 18 months ago.

6 months ago the motherboard quit on me,

Today I picked up another new PC and it came with Windows 7 Pro (okay, it was a refurb) I was thinking about
buying a new Windows 8 license when I thought, hey, that license from the old PC was a retail license. I should
be able to transfer it.

So, I called Microsoft and went through the automated system and answered all the question and in less than
10 minutes they had Windows 8 activated on my new PC (I had already installed Windows 8 using that key and
it said it would NOT activate to call Microsoft).

So, now I am working on a clean install of 8.1 using the key.

Awesome!

You can transfer a Retail Key - it's OEM keys that are not transferable

Yup, I was aware but still thought Microsoft would make me jump through hoops