Posted on 10/13/2006 7:22:58 AM PDT by Señor Zorro
Microsoft has released licenses for the Windows Vista operating system that dramatically differ from those for Windows XP in that they limit the number of times that retail editions can be transferred to another device and ban the two least-expensive versions from running in a virtual machine.
The new licenses, which were highlighted by the Vista team on its official blog Tuesday, add new restrictions to how and where Windows can be used.
"The first user of the software may reassign the license to another device one time. If you reassign the license, that other device becomes the "licensed device," reads the license for Windows Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, Ultimate, and Business. In other words, once a retail copy of Vista is installed on a PC, it can be moved to another system only once.
The new policy is narrower than Windows XP's. In the same section, the license for Windows XP Home states: "You may move the Software to a different Workstation Computer. After the transfer, you must completely remove the Software from the former Workstation Computer." There is no limit to the number of times users can make this move. Windows XP Professional's license is identical.
Elsewhere in the license, Microsoft forbids users from installing Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium in a virtual machine. "You may not use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system," the legal language reads. Vista Ultimate and Vista Business, however, can be installed within a VM.
Vista Home Basic, at $199 for a full version and $99 for an upgrade, and Vista Home Premium ($239/$159), are the two most-affordable retail editions of the operating system scheduled to appear on store shelves in January 2007.
Although the Vista team's blog did not point out these changes, it did highlight others. "Two notable changes between Windows Vista license terms and those for Windows XP are: 1) failure of a validation check results in the loss of access to specific features; and 2) an increase in our warranty period from 90 days to 1 year, which brings Windows in line with most other Microsoft products," wrote Vista program manager Nick White.
Specifically, the Vista license calls out the ramifications of a failed validation check of Vista.
"The software will from time to time validate the software, update or require download of the validation feature of the software," it reads. "If after a validation check, the software is found not to be properly licensed, the functionality of the software may be affected."
Vista's new anti-piracy technologies, collectively dubbed "Software Protection Platform," have met with skepticism by analysts and criticism by users. Under the new program, a copy of Vista that's judged to be in violation of its license, or is counterfeit, is disabled after a set period, leaving the user access only to the default Web browser, and then only for an hour at a time.
I just moved to a MacBook Pro. I can boot into either the Mac OS or XP. I am mainly a Machead, but there are just too many little utilities and games for the PC that aren't available on Mac. It's a best of both worlds scenario.
Boot Camp isn't a virtual machine. It just allows you to run XP natively on a Macintel.
This cannot be legally enforcable. They can restrict where you may install it, but not what you do with it.
I mean that Microsoft has drm'd (Data Rights Management) Vista so heavily, that it knows if a commercial CD or DVD is copy protected and will not allow it to be copied using software that is still available and works under XP. DVD Shrink, X-Copy, etc will not function under Vista. They have locked it down solidly at the core level.
I believe that it is because Microsoft is invested heavily in HD DVD and to a lesser extent Blu Ray with their VC1 codec. There is a Managed Copy agreement to allow you to copy HD material for use in a home server, but it cannot be on removable media and is locked to one unique Vista computer.
Vista is the end of Fair Use rights.
LLS
I suppose it depends on where you live. Out here in SoCal, I've purchased OpenBSD and Slackware at the local Fry's. I've also found Red Hat (or, as you correctly pointed out, now Fedora) on the shelves as recently as six months ago.
I never much cared to SuSE. Just a bias of mine. Never tried Linspire since I'm pretty happy with Slackware.
But why??? Windows already does everything we need it to!
I'm liking Gentoo based SABAYON...DVD version not the Mini....which requires you have some real Linux skills...
Where in the H**LL did you get that statement?
Link for PCLINUXOS:
If you think all Linux distributions are made the same... think again.
ANOTHER RESOURCE is :
NOTE....THERE AIN'T JUST ONE!!!
See above,....and I didn't mean to be shouting....
But why??? Windows already does everything we need it to!
Sure...if crashing several times a day and screwing you out of your fair use rights is high on your list of priorities with an operating system.
I don't think so. As I understand Boot Camp, it is basically a nice GUI to set up dual-booting.
Boot Camp does provide three technically useful pieces beyond the GUI setup:
Beware that this BIOS emulation is not perfect. For example I see this post discussing problems with getting the disks to operate using the highest possible performance with this BIOS emulation, because it is doesn't enable some of the advanced disk channel options: Mac Pro w Boot Camp - SATA, AHCI, EFI, BIOS - what can we do?
I'm not active in the group of folks doing Linux ports to Mac Intel hardware, but (1) I'm sure they are active (Linus Torvalds, the King Penguin, drives a Mac Intel for his main box), and (2) I'd imagine that they are working with "real" EFI firmware, not the Boot Camp BIOS emulator firmware. Linux has long supported EFI booting; that I know because I've been doing it for several years, on Itanium hardware. EFI is frequently the provocation for some of Linus's finest rants on the kernel mailing list lkml.org.
Where in the H**LL did you get that statement?
I'm thinking he means that replacing a motherboard re-activates Windows Authentication.
When you Activate Windows after the motherboard replacement, that's your "Second Activation".
I have to call MS and activate over the phone because I've upgraded my XP machine so many times. And I swear it's only running on one machine.
I don't know what you do to your computer but I haven't had Windows crash in years, if fact, I don't think I've ever had XP crash. Fair use rights? Hmmm...I have no problem ripping my CDs to my computer as mp3 files.
Bully for you. You are either blessed with the magically error-free edition of Windows, or you have an incredibly bad memory. Me, I have used Windows for cryptography, coding, image manipulation, and games. This is on an Intel P4 3.06 GHz CPU system with 2 GBs of RAM. The most recent crash was just 12 hours ago.
Meanwhile, I've got an identical system running Linux that's got a continuous uptime of 533 days now.
Probably won't matter in the least bit. They're talking about "retail" versions, which no medium, let along large network would use. That, and the fact they're talking about home versions of Vista, which would never be used outside of a SOHO environment. After all, you can't use XP Home if you need to authenticate into a domain.
Mark
Apparently one is not allowed to buy a new computer according to MicroSoft.
More importantly, I wonder if a fresh install on the same hardware counts as a "transfer?" After all, it's been my experience that for optimum performance, you really need to do a fresh load of Windows about once a year or every 18 months. And then there are those computers which are hijacked and infested so thouroughly that it's much simpler and less time consuming to just wipe the system and reload.
Mark
Wow...that sounds real convenient.
Think I'll stick to my W2K Pro.
(Although we do have 2 XP machines at home and I use one at work. My W2K machine has the least problems/headaches of them all.)
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