Text 22577, 82 rader
Skriven 2006-10-15 12:06:10 av Alan Zisman (1:123/789.0)
  Kommentar till text 22551 av ROBERT FOWLER (1:123/140)
Ärende: Vista anti-piracy
=========================
On Sat, 14 Oct 2006 23:27:00 -0400, ROBERT FOWLER -> CHARLES ANGELICH
wrote:

 -=>> CHARLES ANGELICH wrote to ROBERT FOWLER <=-


 AZ>>> In my computer lab, we've recently transitioned from
 AZ>>> all-Win98SE to nearly all Win2000 systems... (some of the
 AZ>>> systems have WinXP licenses, but not all-- and I can use a
 AZ>>> single image on all of them, despite minor hardware
 AZ>>> differences, so I chose to go with running Win2000 on the
 AZ>>> XP-licensed systems to simplify maintenance, and to have
 AZ>>> all systems looking and acting the same).

 CA>>> And to avoid the necessity to "validate" each XP install
 CA>>> if any hardware requires replacement, I understand. :-)

 RF>> That's not an issue where corporate licensing is involved.

 CA>> I may be misunderstanding Alan but it seems he gets systems one
 CA>> at a time and relies on the individual OEM licensing that came
 CA>> with the machine when it was originally purchased so where do
 CA>> you get "corporate licensing" in that?

 RF>   I understood him to say that he has a bulk license rule that applies
 RF>   to donated (but not purchased) hardware.  Whether or not there is
 RF>   a technical process (key, etc.) that overrides or removes the inherent
 RF>   re-activation requirements, I don't know.

Microsoft has a (poorly-promoted) program (named Fresh Start for
Education) whereby schools (in US, Canada, and other countries) can apply
for a license allowing for installation of (the school's choice of)
Win98SE or Win2000 (SP4) onto any donated PC.

In this case, the computers were not donated but purchased-- while they're
all nearly-identical IBM NetVista P4 systems, they were purchased in two
bunches-- the first set, purchased last Spring, are P4-1.8 GHz models with
Win2000 licenses. The remainder, which arrived on the first day of school
this Fall, are P4-2.0 GHz models with WinXP Pro licenses. Aside from the
modest speed bump and the different OS licenses, and a slightly different
IBM model number, the systems are otherwise identical.

I could have used a corporate copy of XP owned by my school district to
install that OS, but when I found that my existing Win2000 image installed
without problem-- including all my installed and configured software, I
chose to use that. (My understanding is that I can legally 'downgrade' an
XP-licensed system to run Win2000 on it, but not the other way around).


 RF>   It makes sense in that W2K probably doesn't won't compete with Vista,
 RF>   at least to any significant degree, as W2K is a business OS and Vista
 RF>   will be a home OS.

As with XP, MS is targetting a variety of versions of Vista... some at
business/enterprise users, other at home users.

In fact, the enterprise version(s) of Vista are supposed to start becoming
available to large corporate clients before the end of this year, in
advance of the retail and home-PC versions.

 RF>   Microsoft has already defined the lines and they have been discussed
 RF>   here in detail, perhaps with the exception of Vista.  Clearly, though
 RF>   Vista is the successor to XP and not W2K.

Agreed-- and XP had a Home version pre-installed on most
consumer-targetted computers and a Pro version, pre-installed on most
business-targetted computers.

Go onto Dell's website, for instance, and look at the OS's bundled with
Inspiron laptops (marketted primarily to home users) vs Latitude laptops
(marketted primarily to corporate users)


-- 


email Alan: alan (at) zisman (dot) ca

Alan's website: www.zisman.ca

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