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.
What estimate of their number of servers, by whom? Did it break them down by O/S as well? Doubtful since it was an estimate to begin with.
Thanks to all of you who posted links...I bookmarked them, and will begin experimenting on one of my non-XP systems soon. Semi-geek instead of full geek, but I bet I can get one of'em running nicely before I need to make decisions on the rest of them.
Many people build their own computers because its even cheaper, or they have specific requirements (like gamers). Add this to the fact that if you replace the motherboard you have used up your replacement..
Sure, no problem, but since desktops are the overwhelming majority of all computers, and Windows dominates on servers as well, the overall percentages aren't much if any different.
Even atomdevil admitted that is more in the context of upgrading your motherboard, not replacing it due to failure.
Probably going to need a new photo parody, this time featuring Ballmer.
I have stuck by MS for a long time but the DRM and the petty VM restrictions have Ballmer's large footprints all over them. VM scares the hell out of MS because it allows people to use MS and MS-platform software on an as-needed basis...which breaks the pattern of one OS for life that they have become accustomed to.
The nanny-state stuff with DRM and the pointless media-copy arms race sounds good on Wall Street but on a functional practical level it will be ignored/bypassed by the remaining MS users who are hard-core techies and it will simply confuse clueless home users. Media protection schemes have been a dismal failure to date both in terms of protection and usability and Vista sounds like it's delivering more of a bad thing.
"they probably don't have 20,000."
http://linux.omnipotent.net/article.php?article_id=12019
"Linux clusters are here to stay. Like Linux itself they are playing an important role in our daily life without our even being aware of them. For example google.com (my favorite search engine) runs a Linux cluster of around seventy thousand machines! That's one of the reasons why Google is so fast. "
And this was from 2001!
LOL!! Funny pic!!
The author Satyakam Goswami didn't provide a source.
You can get Linux systems from Dell and HP. They're just not the default. Apparently, both of them have a higher opinion of Linux's worth than you do.
I believe Google's cluster runs off commodity hardware powered by Linux.
Thanks!
but since desktops are the overwhelming majority of all computers, and Windows dominates on servers as well...
You're just citing current sales figures, you have no idea about what installed base is already out there, and you're not taking into consideration all of the ancillary networking and computing equipment that's sold every year.
It's just a nit, I know, but you'd savage us Open Sourcers about making such sweeping statements, and I'm just holding you to the same standard.
Actually, as the platform itself has been standardized (ECMA 335), it is not the platform that is hard for them to create. The hard part is recreating the extra libraries, not part of either the CLI or C# standard that MS bundles with VS.
DotGNU is making pretty good progress. Their status on the libraries is available at Portable.NET Status Page. Mono has been working on this as well.
To some degree they will always be playing catch up--recreating the libraries as soon as MS puts them out. However, this isn't the impossible task that Win32 was.
I don't think you can order home desktops, I think they're only available to business customers. You sure can't get them on anything at Circuit City or Best Buy.
Ok fine, without any sort of backing evidence available I conceed.
Bingo, which is what I was explaining to him. I think he got it but thanks for backing me up.
Where is your source for 'probabally' not running more than 20k nodes..
Is changing the processor considered a move? I regularly replace my motherboards and processors. Since I often have to reinstall XP, I'll assume Vista will reject. Hmm... This is not a good thing.
From what I can gather the main motivator for Vista is 64 bit computing - ultimately I think that is the driver here.
From a review I read about a year ago, they managed to offload screen redraws to the graphics hardware which is a "good thing".
Beyond that, I don't know, but I think the big motivator is 64 bit support.
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