Windows Vista Licence worries

[Gatt]

Time to move to a complete Linux or Mac system then!

If only educational software was compatible

What about using Wine on Linux systems?
No idea how effective this will be with systems like SIMS though.

[Geoff]

As I've said previously in other threads. Wine actually does a better job of running 'older' software than WinXP. Generally your OK with most things unless it uses heavy 3d graphics (eg Google Earth, but there's a Linux version of that). Even this can be solved though, you just need to pay for Cedega instead.

[ChrisH]

Hmm paying for software to run windows software on Linux theres something that bothers me about that

[Geoff]

Fine, you've got the WINE source code. Implement DirectX9 yourself.

[Netman]

Update on the Volume Licence Activation!

MS Have now published the Whitepaper on this and boy oh boy is it getting complex for us Volume Users!

Thanks for trawling through that and giving us the lowdown John... I for one am with Wes and will stay with XP for now, but start to dual boot Linux in about 18 months, with a view to moving to any decent distro rather than Vista.
I've always been an MS man - always used and supported them and I'm an MCSE, but enough is enough - they appear to have lost the plot completely and I do think it's going to cost them in market share... quite heavily.

[Gatt]

The only issue I found with Dual Booting Vista is that the new bootmanager (Bootmgr?) doesnt seem to have an equivelant to Xp's /fixmbr facility if your MBR ever gets screwed

Unless its buried somewhere..

[Geoff]

On XP, you can boot into 'Safe Mode with Command Prompt' and run the 'fixmbr' and/or 'fixboot' commands which do the same job. Does the equivelent work on Vista?

[Gatt]

On XP, you can boot into 'Safe Mode with Command Prompt' and run the 'fixmbr' and/or 'fixboot' commands which do the same job. Does the equivelent work on Vista?

No - there appears to be no equivelent command in Vista
fixboot & fixmbr DO NOT work in Vista...

[kingswood]

Great thread guys. I was just reading the EULA this morning before getting to work after being tipped off about concerns over its censorship and restrictive attitude by some blogs I frequent. If you visit OSNEWS and The Register there are some very good rebuttals of Paul Thurrott's arguments. I have even listened to Paul on a podcast explain (well...try to) Microsoft's newly "clarified" position on licensing and Vista and I'm not impressed.

Overly restrictive virtual machine rules (there's no technical reason for Vista Home or Premium not being used in a VM- it's a cost and legal thing), overly restrictive rules about moving your copy of Vista to a new machine, and censorship issues about benchmarking and .NET 3.0 make Vista look not only like a bad version of XP but completely draconian.

And don't get me started on the price for Ultimate (around £390)! So to use Vista in a tool like Parallels would cost me £390. I could use Home or Premium Edition but that wouldn't be legal.

And what about Defender? Have you read the EULA sections that mention this little application and what it *could* do to your system and applications? Makes for interesting legalese.

No thanks.

Linux and Mac OS are becoming the only option for a lot of us.

[GrumbleDook]

I am would like to hear information about how the EULA changes things for the education sector directly ... Open Agreement, Select Agreement, Schools and Academic Agreements ...

Once this is available, then I will consider what to do with virtualisation, etc.

[Geoff]

Schools Agreement gets you Vista Enterprise and it's attached EULA. The schools agreement does allow you to downgrade to XP though.

http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...ogramGuide.doc

[john]

Vista Pricing (up to date as of ~2 weeks ago), from a source I have that I cannot disclose as it would get both of us in trouble, its for the Full Packaged stuff not OEM, Select, Open etc so I know we pay less etc but you get a drift.

Windows Vista Business - Full Product -£157, Upgrade - £104
Windows Vista Enterprise - Only avalable to Volume Licence Customers
Windows Vista Home Premium - Full product - £125, Upgrade - £83
Windows Vista Home Basic - Full Product - £104, Upgrade - £52
Windows Vista Ultimate - Full Product - £210, Upgrade - £136

Edit - forgot to put with them, that they are NOT confirmed launch prices or anything like that as far as I know, they are best figures that my contact had from what he said was a reliable source, so please don't start making budgetary decisions based on these prices as they are not the offical final prices, but looking at them they would seem sensible areas to be in

[Geoff]

I guess Enterprise is the one to aim for then? How does Enterprises EULA compare to the others considering the 'restrictions' that have been discussed.

[john]

Business or Enterprise Geoff, I suspect that you will manage with Business as thats the more direct replacement for XP Pro as far as I can tell, and I suspect thats the one you will get with any Software Assurance rights you have. The enterprise is aimed more at very very large deployment bases, rather than your 300/400 workstations. I think the figure of 300+ really before you look at enterprise edition but as I have not seeen a 110% confirmation of what you get in each one and what the vista equivalents are yet (I have seen the MS Office ones) then I am a little unsure myself.

[kingswood]

Yeah- this is for Joe User who lives in normality:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-Wi...TF8&s=software

Mmmmmmm...