SteveJ

External connectors are for 'external users' ("An external user is a person who is not an employee, or similar personnel of the company or its affiliates, and is not someone to whom you provide hosted services using the server software".) Windows Server 2008 R2: External Connector Licensing You'll need Windows Server User CAL's and RDS User CAL's to allow home use by staff members. You also need to make sure you have the correct windows licenses and any software licenses. Windows Server 2008 R2: Licensing Terminal Services For Schools you're looking at around £4 for a Windows Server CAL and £12 for an RDS CAL. EDIT: As you have a schools agreement, you may already be licensed for staff home use for Windows, Office and Windows server CALs so you'd just need to buy 10 RDS user CALs under the schools select agreement.

I think you need to use your previous Windows XP OEM disc and key. If you don't have a valid Key I think you'll need to contact Dell.

The problem is FQC-02312 is an upgrade.... If the laptops do not have a license to upgrade from you can't buy this. If you bought them you would be able to install them from a technical point of view, but you would not be licensed correctly.

I'm afraid you'll need Full retail copies of Windows to be licensed properly. You're probably looking at £100 + VAT at least for Windows 7 Home Premium I'd always suggest getting OEM licenses for Windows when you buy new machines. If you get Starter edition you can buy the much cheaper upgrade licenses to Pro then.

Just thought I'd mention, If you're looking for 40 Sibelius, it shouldn't come to £7k, more like £3k as they offer a volume license for £79 each for 10 or more copies

Paid £88 for a Prometric MS MCP test through e-Academy in Cardiff if it helps

Yep, sorry that's right. Bit of brain fade for me I think! Not sure what i was looking at

Shaun's already answered your question, but to give you an idea of pricing (assuming it's for a school), SQL costs about £920 + VAT Per Processor or £115 per server and £22 per CAL under SELECT licensing.

External Connectors are for people who are not part of the organisation to connect (e.g. General public, parent, etc). You'd need user CAL's for the staff who need to connect from home in addition to the device CAL's for the machines in school. If a member of staff has a PC only they use in school, you can get away with just a user CAL for that member of staff and it'll cover them for use at home and the school machine. If other people use that school machine, you need a device CAL also. Windows Server 2008 R2: Client Licensing External Connector Licensing Overview

With DPM 2010 there is no longer a separate server license, you license by the number of management licenses (per server/client). Rough cost under schools: ML per Server -£7.50 ML per Client -£1.00

MS only offer the latest versions of products under Volume licensing which allow you to downgrade to a previous version if necessary. You won't be able to buy VL's for new installs of Windows, only upgrade licenses. It's cheapest to get OEM copies buying/building the machines. You would need CAL's, so a copy of Windows server with 10 CAL's would set you back about £1000 + VAT. You'd then be looking at £150 per additional 5 CAL pack.

True, you can only downgrade to the same or equivilant editions. If you have Windows 7 Pro, you can install Windows XP Pro as you now get downgrade rights with OEM licenses. You'll need to contact your laptop supplier/maufacturer for this. (See Downgrade Rights Details & FAQ) If you have Windows 7 Home you'll need to buy Window 7 Pro upgrade licenses (about £35 each for schools) from a MS reseller which will allow you to downgrade to XP Pro.

There won't be any pricing available until Feb, but if they follow Campus pricing expect Desktop to be somewhere around the £35* mark. To give a rough idea just add 20-30%* to your current individual license costs and multiply by your FTE count. *Obviously it could be higher or lower than this depending on how MS price it

I work for a reseller, my boss was on a conference call this morning so we've got nothing in writing yet but I thought it might be useful for people to know who have a renewal coming up. I think the extension will just be a 6 month renewal rather than a full year renewal. Even if it's not I'm sure there will be a way around it (e.g. the Core CAL suite to Enterprise CAL suite step up SKU). My understanding is this extension is available to customers who's renewal date is 31/10/10 or later.

Thought some people might be interested to hear that we've heard from Microsoft that they are planning to offer the option for schools to license their MS software annually using the FTE method (cost calculated based on staff count) used by their Campus (University) customers. This will be available from March so they are allowing any schools agreements expiring from 1st November onwards to get a six month extension for their current agreement so that they can join the new scheme in March. The cost per license will be higher (likely (but not guarenteed) to be 20-30%) but as most schools have more machines than staff it should make the Schools agreement better value for most schools. The option of licensing by machine count will continue to be available.

If you speak to MS, they should increase your activations limit as you have a valid reason for it. There is a work around for stanadlone ugrades that have a similar problem: http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/clean_install_upgrade_media.asp I doubt it will work, but the 'registry hack' might be worth a punt.

What about one of Adobe's cheaper competitors? Depending on what she need software like Quark Xpress, Corel Draw or Serif Design Suite might do the job she needs but at a cheaper price. Could be worth her getting a few trials of alternatives? For Print, Quark would be a good alternative to Indesign (Cost about £85 + VAT)

Is your school a member of the Specialist Schools trust? Their members can buy at CLP3 (cheaper than Student & Teacher Box). As Robbocop said, the Student & Teacher box cannot be used on a machine owned by the school. The member of staff will also need to activate it with Adobe by sending staff ID to them in order to obtain a serial number.

Are you trying to install with OEM media? I haven't done much with OEM, but if you're using OEM media I don't think it works with KMS or MAK keys, only the individual OEM Key attached to the PC? To use KMS or MAK I think you need Volume licensing media.

Bit late, but you can transfer CAL's between users/devices once every 90 days. So you can use the same CAL's each year (as long as you don't go over the total number you have).