Apologies for being so late with this... testing today it seems the activation code we were given works with the free version download, though can't say how long it will continue to work. Up to & including the GOTD in August, 2021, Partition Assistant Pro could be installed & activated at any time, but since then AOMEI has been limiting that sort of capability. The next giveaway after 8/21 deactivated, and with the one after that, new installs would activate for 2 days after the giveaway, if I remember correctly. This is the first time I can remember AOMEI using the GOTD wrapper.
Partitioning apps have been adding somewhat unrelated features, I assume to try & justify their [IMHO Too High] price [personally I think a lifetime license, with no major version upgrades, should be worth around $30-$35 on sale]. The main thing this version adds is some disk cleaning features, which I was concerned would add to the software's footprint in Windows -- the good news is it only adds maybe a dozen files. It is only a one year license, but in the past the time between AOMEI's giveaways has been less than a year. And there's always that giveaway from 8/21, along with Paragon's free version, though their stuff is getting a bit outdated [it seems they've stopped development], & of course Windows itself & GParted.
I installed one copy of Partition Assistant Pro 9.9.0 solely in case they made any improvements to their Windows To Go creator. I prefer the higher rated Rufus, but for a while it didn't support secure Boot, and the last time I used it it would not work with a couple of copies of Win10, & then it took an exceedingly long time once I did get it to work, though that may have been due to the SSD I was using. AOMEI's Win2Go creator works and I think is a good alternative. I prefer booting to Win2Go & running the full version of Partition Assistant rather than the WinPE version of AOMEI Partition Assistant when it requires restarting to complete whatever task, though that option does usually work. Otherwise I've not bothered with any of Partition Assistant's added features -- I've had no need -- sticking with the basic deleting/creating/resizing partitions, with the Very occasional copying one partition to another.
Partition Assistant does add drivers -- the same ones they've used for a few years -- and I've never had a problem with them. An x64 sun-folder includes the WinPE version of the app, which *may* work on a WinPE USB stick as a standalone app, though I've sometimes in the past had to activate it separately. The full version app itself does tie activation to a PC/Laptop ID.