Windows VISTA cost... :-(

See
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061102-8140.html

"
A previous version of the Windows Vista retail license restricted the
number of times you may transfer Vista from one device to another. The
license read: "The first user of the software may reassign the license
to another device one time. If you reassign the license, that other
device becomes the 'licensed device.'"

The new license has removed this language relating to device transfers,
and now reads: "You may install one copy of the software on the licensed
device. You may use the software on up to two processors on that device
at one time. Except as provided in the Storage and Network Use (Ultimate
edition) sections below, you may not use the software on any other device."
"

However:

"
It bears repeating, however, the the OEM license that comes with Vista
is indeed similar to the Windows XP OEM license in that it forbids any
kind of transfer. As we have previously reported, users have
nevertheless had success transferring those copies of Windows, but they
are technically stepping outside of the bounds of the EULA when doing so.
"

xp oem can be legally transfered to another board if it is a warranty or insurance type issue or at microsofts descretion on boards that die in storms, i do it day in day out in summer when the storms are about, only ever had one knocked back because the user had it on several machines at once and they had had enough of him in the past...

Yup and they are much more likely to allow it if the request is coming from a business and not an individual - purely because M$ trusts businesses more than individuals :(

nah,

they are droids on the line, they look at situations database and act from there....


only once have i needed to really announce who i was...

Fair enough, I was speaking from the point of view of a friend who had to deal with them for exactly the discussed reason (moving of OEM license from 1 machine to another).

His words:

The OEM copy will not re-activate on a second motherboard over the internet. You can ring Microsoft's 1800 number and they may re-activate it for you if you cry enough. I had some succes doing this with WinXP Pro - I tried it with 2 different copies of XP, they re-activated 1 and refused to re-activate the 2nd (each try was about 2 months apart) and I ended up having to buy a new copy.

This problem has caused me to vow never to by OEM Windows again, even though it costs more for the retail copy I figure it is worth it to avoid the hassles since I tend to upgrade each year.

#############

As an aside this bloke upgrades at least once a year so it was probably bad timing on his part to have to request moves twice so close together...

I didn't see it as such a big issue as I'm not going to be upgrading half as often as he does, so I was happy enough with being restricted to 1 motherboard for half the cost.

I guess it all comes down to which drone you get on the day and whether they've got PMS or not :angel:

This thread has been fascinating...

My father is running an older iMac and has been advised by peers to dump it and go PC/Vista....

We Mac lovers here will know what I said to dad.:D :D :D

GQ

Hey don't get me wrong - I have and love my Mac :)

But it's not a games machine (though yes it can play games) and I can more easily "beef up" my PC when the time comes with a lot wider choice of Hardware... of course the downside to that much wider choice of hardware is some incompatibilities (which is the major cause of blue screens).

I don't want any slanging of OS's / architectures going on, they've all got their pros and cons and all have their niche where they excel. As much as I hate giving money to M$ I've gotta take my hat off to them for their ability to write an OS that runs stably over a huge range of hardware (my experience with Windows XP is that it's a *lot* more stable than previous releases)... and yes you can point to Linux also, but Linux has only recently come into the GUI world with both guns flying - it took them quite a while to get their own heads around GUI's - whereas Windows had a working GUI even with Windows 95, possibly (if you want to call it that) way back when with Windows 3.1....

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tote

Be aware that Vista will break all your apps. I reverted to XP as getting it all to work was too hard.

Regards,
Tote

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That's why we Linux users say Microsoft has a feature called...'
' PLUG AND PRAY' :wasntme:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rovernaut

That's why we Linux users say Microsoft has a feature called...'
' PLUG AND PRAY' :wasntme:

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Still better than trying to decipher misleading man pages though ;-)
Regards,
Tote

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tote

Still better than trying to decipher misleading man pages though ;-)
Regards,
Tote

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That's what OS X is for... ;)

Nice, sexy GUI on BSD UNIX... Can't beat it. :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tote

whereas Windows had a working GUI even with Windows 95, possibly (if you want to call it that) way back when with Windows 3.1....

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Don't forget that there was a GUI for the PCs well before Windows came out... Digital Research GEM. :cool:

M