Roberto Posted October 16, 2006 Posted October 16, 2006 Seen some quiet interesting stuff about the retail licence, which I've blogged about here. Long story short, if you purchase a retail licence, you can only move it once from one system to another once, and thats your lot. And keep in mind that Microsoft's de-facto definition of 'system' is 'motherboard'. I wonder if we'll see anything similar in the campus / select agreements. They can't be serious surely?
tarquel Posted October 16, 2006 Posted October 16, 2006 And keep in mind that Microsoft's de-facto definition of 'system' is 'motherboard' minus that though if it dies I don't see that changing in select agreements particularly, as they will already be keeping check of things with this WGA type system that will be needed with VLK licensing too Nath.
Geoff Posted October 16, 2006 Posted October 16, 2006 You should probably read this article to clear up any misunderstandings about the Vista EULA. http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_licensing.asp I wonder if we'll see anything similar in the campus / select agreements Yes, Vista Enterprise (mentioned above). http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/editions/enterprise.mspx
tarquel Posted October 16, 2006 Posted October 16, 2006 doh doh doh and thrice doh... you beat me to the linky again Nath
Roberto Posted October 16, 2006 Author Posted October 16, 2006 You should probably read this article to clear up any misunderstandings about the Vista EULA. http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_licensing.asp Well as Mr Thurrot has been full of it in the past on various issues, I don't trust his opinion as fact any more than I trust my own opinion or anyone else's. He isn't an authority on the subject is what I mean to say. I don't know anyone who mis-undestood the intent of the XP licence in the way they talk about there but a lot of people seem to misunderstand the new terms to mean what they actually say. Yes, Vista Enterprise (mentioned above). http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/editions/enterprise.mspx I need to find the time to read the EULA for that sometime. I simply don't trust Microsoft when it comes to licence issues. Do you?
Geoff Posted October 16, 2006 Posted October 16, 2006 I don't have to, I'm sat infront of a Linux machine.
Roberto Posted October 16, 2006 Author Posted October 16, 2006 Well that'll work. I'd rather be using a Mac myself but its all good.
john Posted October 16, 2006 Posted October 16, 2006 Basically the new Vista VLK licencing is going to work a bit like Sibelius Network Licencing does in a way (if anyone has used Sibelius Networked Edition they will know what I am meaning) But basically you will have a master server or two, three etc that will be on the interweb, and you clients will have to check in with it every so often to confirm that you are still licenced to use it and keep it open, if it fails, it will retry for a set number of days, and if it still fails, it will go into Lock Down mode. I have not had info on how this will work with Laptops as a lot of my laptop don't see the network ever as they are used mainly at home by staff for continuation of work brought home on memory sticks, CD etc.... so I don't know how that will work. Its designed to help you keep tabs on your number of licences you have, and will in some cases save you money as you won't be over purchasing, but in others it will cost you more as you will then have it in black and white how many you are using etc.. Me for one am not keen on the idea at all, its just activation for corperate customers
wesleyw Posted October 17, 2006 Posted October 17, 2006 Time to move to a complete Linux or Mac system then! Wes
webman Posted October 17, 2006 Posted October 17, 2006 Time to move to a complete Linux or Mac system then! If only educational software was compatible
Geoff Posted October 17, 2006 Posted October 17, 2006 Ironically I find some of the 'older' software which doesn't behave so well under WinXP works just fine under Wine.
Roberto Posted October 17, 2006 Author Posted October 17, 2006 Time to move to a complete Linux or Mac system then! If only educational software was compatible But that's a question you'll need to ask yourself about Vista as well. If you upgrade in the expectation that the 14 year old bit of software your maths department purchased from "Dogs barking in the background whenever you phone up the cottage in Wales for support" software LTD, and which was widely regarded as awkward to set up in its prime will work just fine with Vista, you'll be disappointed. As Geoff notes, you may well get better results on a Mac or Linux with WINE. Its designed to help you keep tabs on your number of licences you have, and will in some cases save you money as you won't be over purchasing, but in others it will cost you more as you will then have it in black and white how many you are using etc. Of course, anything that helps you to ensure that you have the correct amount of licences is a good thing, no matter what the result to your bottom line. It's one thing to decide you don't like the terms of use for a piece of software and take your business elsewhere, but obviously if you decide to use an item of software then you need to ensure you have paid the correct amount to do so. Actually I know we're all well aware of that, and its usually teaching staff and managers who seem to think paying for software is an interesting optional thing to do occasionally, so this will help you explain to others that no, you "can't just" and that people really should take things seriously. On a slightly different note, it seems I'm not the only one that thinks Mr Thurrot talks out of where WGA was designed either..
Geoff Posted October 17, 2006 Posted October 17, 2006 You should probably read this article to clear up any misunderstandings about the Vista EULA. http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_licensing.asp Rebuttal by ZDNet. http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=158
Geoff Posted October 18, 2006 Posted October 18, 2006 Post Mortem on the whole debate by ArsTechnica. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061017-8008.html
john Posted October 31, 2006 Posted October 31, 2006 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! Basically we now have 2 schemes to enter, the one I mentioend earlier where you have a licence server on your system which the clients check in with and it "phones home" as it were, or you can request specific product keys like OEM ones which will activate multiple times designed for 25 or less machines or machines which won't see the licence server for more than 180 days (it also says 210 in the MS blurb because you have 30 days grace from day 180 to get on the system again). Best thing for early deployers is you have to use Option 2 IE the individual phoneing home product keys as the new licence server is only for LH server at present, and the Server 2003 one is not due until Spring 2007, so well done MS you give us the software for Christmas but don't give us everything we need until Easter. Well Done, have a gold sticker for it http://download.microsoft.com/download/c/2/9/c2935f83-1a10-4e4a-a137-c1db829637f5/10-03-06SoftwareProtectionWP.doc is the whitepaper on the Windows Software Protection Platform for Vista and LH Server, its also good to note that they are going to put this in many MS applications as well so it will not stop here!
Gatt Posted October 31, 2006 Posted October 31, 2006 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 Posted October 31, 2006 Posted October 31, 2006 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 Posted October 31, 2006 Posted October 31, 2006 Hmm paying for software to run windows software on Linux theres something that bothers me about that
Geoff Posted October 31, 2006 Posted October 31, 2006 Fine, you've got the WINE source code. Implement DirectX9 yourself.
Netman Posted October 31, 2006 Posted October 31, 2006 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 Posted October 31, 2006 Posted October 31, 2006 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 Posted October 31, 2006 Posted October 31, 2006 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 Posted October 31, 2006 Posted October 31, 2006 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 Posted October 31, 2006 Posted October 31, 2006 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 Posted October 31, 2006 Posted October 31, 2006 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.
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