Smart Notebook 14\15 Licences Lost

[CommodoreS]

I have been told that if a machine dies which has Smart Notebook 14\15 installed and one of the new licence keys (limited to 3 per new board) and the machine dies with a hard drive failure, or other unrecoverable windows issue there is no way to recover the licence to reuse it, it is lost and needs to be repurchased.

 

After reimage

 

Unfortunately there is no way to release keys if the reimage has already taken place - your digital environment wouldn’t exist anymore to return the license from if the machine has already been rebuilt.

 

This is consistent with other software products on the market.

 

I'd like to know people's thoughts on this please. It seems a bit unfair to me.

[FN-GM]

One of the reasons we replaced 50 Smartboards with another product here.

[Michael]

Interesting problem - I'd be curious to know how long an activation is valid for, considering lots of schools will be looking to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10. I can't imagine they'd expect someone to manually un-activate Smart Notebook on hundreds of devices?

 

What happens if you include Smart Notebook 15 as part of an image...? I presume it remains activated, even after Sysprep?

[CommodoreS]

Perhaps a bit premature on this, I have done some digging. Apparently licences can be released using a Manual Release button on the Smart Licence Portal and attaching an XML file for that install. I am now trying to find out how you export the XML file and if they can be stored or if they expire. Idea being to keep a copy of the XML file for each machine if it fails then to use that to reclaim the licence. I am guessing that would also be quicker than logging on each machine and deactivating when it comes to windows 10 rebuilds.

 

I am guessing including Smart Notebook 15 as part of an image is somehow against the smart licensing agreement in their T&Cs. However I use Deployment Workbench and Windows Deployment Services so that does not affect me.