On Thu, 2006-02-02 at 11:09 +0000, Paul Tansom wrote:
Also regarding Windows XP, if your upgrade to your machine included significant parts that are essential to it's operation (Processor, Hard Drive or Main Board) then you would have qualified for an OEM copy of Windows XP rather than the full price one your friend bought...The OEM version is a lot cheaper, but can only be used on that machine.
You shouldn't be advertising that fact here should you? At least not without making a more pointed comment about the fact that if your motherboard fails then you technically should be replacing your OS as well, or other similar comment :)
No in my opinion it is fine to advertise this :-) The restriction is once you have bound the licence to the machine is that you cannot move it to another complete unit. Given that it is very hard to buy a machine these days that doesn't already have such a licence, the boxed version (which is transferable between machines) is especially worthless.
Actually it would appear that the old style OEM licences have now all but gone in favour of the new style "system builder" packs which can only be supplied as part of a whole machine (where whole machine is defined as a fully assembled computer system comprising of CPU, Motherboard, Hard Drive, PSU and Case)
With the original OEM licence packs things get a bit grey and murky once you start to consider how much of the machine you have to retain to keep the licence....the licence CoA is stuck to the case and considering the PSU is a vital (non peripheral as MS define it) part of the system it may be within the terms to transfer the licence to a new machine with these parts...then replacing the PSU later "due to failure"
I remember talking to a supplier some time ago that had a major amount of hassle with Microsoft because the motherboard they supplied in a new machine failed within the month and MS were insisting that he supply a brand new copy of Windows with the warranty replacement motherboard! (So either he was out of pocket or the customer would be very unhappy about the extra cost! MS relented in the end though).
I don't know how this could happen, but we are entitled to replace any system component as an upgrade or due to failure...this does sometimes mean that you have to go through the activation procedure again (which will most likely fail) but a freephone call to Microsoft to explain the situation will resolve this.
There are other restrictions with OEM operating system licences, one being your support ends at the supplier not Microsoft.
One area where I am still not sure is this.
Both my laptop and my desktop originally had XP OEM licences and both still retain the CoA...However I have reformatted both of these and now run XP (installed from OEM media) on top of VMware on top of Linux...So is that within the bounds of the OEM licence ? Technically the code is running on the same hardware but you could consider the virtual machine a different machine to what the licence was originally bound to.
I actually raised this query with Microsoft System Builder support and am yet to receive a definitive answer..so maybe they are as confused as me :-)