The only way I see myself ever giving it another go is if I manage to get into my NixOS setup for easy replication or something, too much manual tweaking otherwise.
The compromise I arrived at after I migrated to Linux was booting windows off a VHD file on a USB SSD when I really need it. That way I get a portable, fully performant install without it wasting any disk space or messing with my partitions.
Last I checked offline hours didn’t count either, yeah. I’m not sure if anything is supposed to have changed in the meantime, as it’s been a while.