Windows 10 (again) on Dell Inspiron 11 3000 Series

Client brought me a Dell Inspiron 11 3000 series she got for free from Time-Warner Cable.  It has Windows 8.1 on it.  My intent was to upgrade to Windows 10 and clone to an SSD using Acronis software.

Earlier I downloaded Windows 10 onto a flash drive and used that to do a clean install on another computer, a Dell Vostro 220 desktop.  But I wasn’t  able to activate Windows 10.  

My experience with the Dell Inspiron laptop was worse.  I wanted to do a clean install of Windows 10 but kept on running into trouble. The Windows 10 installer wouldn’t recognize the ssd.  It kept on asking for drivers. So I put back the 8.1 drive and tried to upgrade.

When I tried to do the upgrade on the Windows 8.1 drive (not ssd) the upgrade failed.  So then I tried applying the newest Win 8.1 updates and they failed.  Now I’m trying to update again.  

By the way, this site says that you can’t do a clean install of Windows 10 from 7 or 8, but have to upgrade first, activate 10, then you can do a clean install:

http://www.howtogeek.com/224342/how-to-clean-install-windows-10/

Have I fallen into the usual Microsoft morass?

Thanks,
Al