Microsoft Tech Help Desk @ BETT

[Quackers]

I asked somebody about licensing and KMS Server from the Tech Helpdesk, and the person who said she was in the know about Microsoft licensing did not know what a KMS Server was, then she told me i should be buying PC's without a Windows Licence then buying them from a Schools Agreement instead, which i corrected her as they would be "Upgrade" licenses and the PC would have no licence to upgrade, to which she then agreed, then went hunting for somebody who would have a select agreement which you could buy non upgrade licenses from.

If Microsoft staff them selfs do not understand there own licensing what hope do we have?

[apearce]

This is funny as I was on the TechDesk and that wasn't your question LOL

[PeterW]

Please explain??? I'm confused

[eejit]

Hah! You weren't expecting that response Quackers

But to be fair Microsoft often don't know how licensing works. We've had much trouble in licensing Sharepoint and most departments give different answers. In the end we've been pointed at EDLARs by Microsoft as they say they'll probably understood it better.

[apearce]

It's stupid really the whole licensing thing-when I tried to license my school I had 3 education gold partners tell me 3 different things so I asked Microsoft and they told me something else-I just went with the cheapest LOL

SharePoint seems to be the most confusing one to license with CALs and external licenses etc

That's why I've never answered a licensing question on EduGeek as there seems no correct answer haha

[kylewilliamson]

We were given some really rubbish advice in this regard.. that a VLK license was valid instead of, rather than in addition to an OEM key. However, I have also found that talking to 8 different people gets 8 different answers about what you need.

[kmount]

I had 3 education gold partners tell me 3 different things so I asked Microsoft and they told me something else-I just went with the cheapest LOL

Bit like playing parents against each other as a child, except this one is more fun as they have a vested financial interest!

[Quackers]

This is funny as I was on the TechDesk and that wasn't your question LOL

It was, sorry if it came across as a different question but it was to do with KMS Server and licensing.

I wanted to know how we do with Vista what we do with XP, which is in the current way, PC comes in with XP Pro Licence or Vista Business , we connect it to the network, and blank it, and rebuild it up with one of our XP Pro Images using the volume licence key so we do not have to go through this annoying product activation (or the painful process of manually typing each key in), which we are allowed to do under Microsoft's reimage rights, which allows you to install the Volume Licence edition on a PC with an OEM Licence as long as they are identical versions,

Now with Vista its got so complicated and akward, and i still do not understand how i do this with Vista. We have 6 Vista Business Upgrade licences from select, which we bought for testing, and have a Volume Licence Key. Our latest batch of laptops came with Vista Business on, so i'm covered for those 30 PC's to run Vista Business, so how do i deploy them with Vista and not have to manually activate them? As far as i understand we have to use a local KMS Server. But how to i get those OEM licenses understood by the KMS Server as a MAK key?

At the desk i got asked who makes this "KMS Server" (Microsoft does), got told that i should not be swapping between OEM and Volume License, which i can under Reimage rights, then to buy the machines OS less and buy a Volume License for them, but you can only buy Upgrade versions of OS licenses via Volume License, so still need an OEM licence with the machine to upgrade.

I came away more confused, still not understanding how i solve my problem, and that nobody seemed to have an answer or understanding of Microsoft's complicated licensing.

I have so many issues with Vista still its not funny, i was hoping these would be sorted in Windows 7, and i could just keep using XP Pro on any new hardware until Windows 7 is ready. But if the Windows 7 Beta i downloaded last week is anything to go by these problems are still there, and one of them being this new way Volume Licensing works, so i better get my head around it now, but i'm really struggling with it, and i cannot seem to find answers