eastlondon Posted June 20, 2006 Posted June 20, 2006 Can any one give us some advice on Windows Licences? We are going to be chucking out some old 98pc & want to replace them with new PCs that we will build from scratch & put XP on them. But as we are building them they don’t come with an OS. Can we transfer the 98 Licence from our old pc to the new pc & buy an upgrade for XP, or can we buy a old 98/nt & then upgrade? Thanks
Nij.UK Posted June 20, 2006 Posted June 20, 2006 i think this is the case, im not too hot on microsoft licencing.... but as long as u own licences for your Win 98 then u can just by an upgrade licence and that basically turns into an XP Licence.... It might just be worth checking that with people that sell licences, we use Pugh and Ramsys
eastlondon Posted June 20, 2006 Author Posted June 20, 2006 Thanks, so you would say that for all our old pc that had 98 on them we can buy an upgrade & put it the OS on to a diffrent (new) PC & be legal :angel11:
Geoff Posted June 20, 2006 Posted June 20, 2006 If the licenses are OEM licenses (as in they came with 98 installed when the machine was purchased) then no. The license 'belongs' to the machine and you cannot transfer it.
DMcCoy Posted June 20, 2006 Posted June 20, 2006 You can only move them if they are full packaged product licenses - as in they came in a box with a cd at full price. If they are OEM then they are stuck on the machines they came with. I have found buying or building computers without an oem copy of windows as a false economy. I tend to get machines with oem xp pro, so when they are retired they still have an xp license to go with the machine.
ChrisC Posted June 20, 2006 Posted June 20, 2006 I've always interpretted it as, if you have the license, you can use it on any machine, so if you chuck one with 98, as long as you wipe the old one, you can build the new one with 98. I'd assume you can then purchase the xp upgrade, why not, it makes sense. Chris
Geoff Posted June 20, 2006 Posted June 20, 2006 You can't move OEM licenses from machine to machine. If you do this and you get caught your licenses implode. Cue lawsuit. Anyway, how does an upgrade license compare to a xp pro license price wise? I bet there's hardly anything in it.
eastlondon Posted June 20, 2006 Author Posted June 20, 2006 I think the upgrade is £30 & the OEM is £90
ConTheITGuy Posted June 20, 2006 Posted June 20, 2006 I'm pretty sure I've seen "new" Win 98/95 licenses OEM for approx. a fiver. May be an avenue to explore... Andy
GrumbleDook Posted June 20, 2006 Posted June 20, 2006 XP Upgrade also counts against Windows 3.1 /WfW 3.11 ... have a search on fleaBay for these.
ChrisC Posted June 20, 2006 Posted June 20, 2006 Fiver??? Seriously, the cheapest i've seen (albeit publicly) is around £70!!! Chris
DMcCoy Posted June 20, 2006 Posted June 20, 2006 Just be careful how you upgrade too, if you just buy the upgrade licenses rather than use something like the schools agreement, the upgrades inherit the properties of the license they are applied to, so if you stick an xp upgrade on an oem copy of windows, then that upgrades also becomes oem to the machine you first use it on. Fair? No, but thats the way the licensing works.
krisd32 Posted June 20, 2006 Posted June 20, 2006 we buy all our licenses from the county bods at £36 all in i think they use microsoft volume liscensing though. we get a very authentic copied cd and a piece of lanccs county leter headed paper with the serial number on. i don't know how they get away with charging so little but it suits me down to the ground!
CyberNerd Posted June 20, 2006 Posted June 20, 2006 Just tell MS you'll migrate to open source unless they reduce the price, it worked for Massachusetts: http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20060617130009355
ConTheITGuy Posted June 20, 2006 Posted June 20, 2006 we buy all our licenses from the county bods at £36 all in i think they use microsoft volume liscensing though. we get a very authentic copied cd and a piece of lanccs county leter headed paper with the serial number on. i don't know how they get away with charging so little but it suits me down to the ground! These are upgrade licenses - no good for new machines. Oem licenses are not available under any volume licensing agreement. The £5 Win 98 licenses were from Computer Commodities. They were in the last catalogue/little flyer they sent me but seem to have disappeared from the website - maybe they've run out. Andy
krisd32 Posted June 20, 2006 Posted June 20, 2006 is that the same for the office licenses they sell also, had that many problems with them recently i colud actually throttle them, it should be alright with the xp licenses though cause the primary school i go to had all their existing machines with non oem 98 licenses upgraded to xp on new machines. i actually asked them and thety said it was fine ! any how i'll get on the phone to them and ask them!
ConTheITGuy Posted June 20, 2006 Posted June 20, 2006 Nope! Office is fine So are Server licenses. Just XP you can't get on volume without upgrading. Andy
john Posted June 20, 2006 Posted June 20, 2006 OEM lives and dies with the PC it was first used on (as has been said before) For new machines, its cheaper to get XP Pro OEM straight off (~£90) VS paying for say XP home and then upgrading it to XP Pro using the upgrade licence. Now if you can source some 98 OEMs for monkeys that are brand new then that sounds an excellent idea, but just make sure they are not COAs that have been ripped off some skipped PCs.
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