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Tyreal said:Off topic but, would it be illegal for you to trash one of the computers which have one of hte licenses and use that licenses on say.... a new build?
mdameron said:Well, for the OEM version, what do they define as a 'PC'? A hard drive? A mobo? A CPU? The entire rig, including optical drives? So in case of hardware failure or an upgrade, they honestly believe that it's fair to not let you re-use the OS? I REALLY hate that... wish OSX would come to x86, I'm not about to learn a *nix variation...
MRD said:Basically, think of an OEM license as attached to the computer you first install it on. Throw out the computer and you throw out the license. You will need to purchase a new license next time.
A retail license is forever. You will always have a license to run 1 copy of the software on ANY PC of your choice.
MRD said:Basically, think of an OEM license as attached to the computer you first install it on. Throw out the computer and you throw out the license. You will need to purchase a new license next time.
A retail license is forever. You will always have a license to run 1 copy of the software on ANY PC of your choice.
MRD said:Haha, the case. That's clever.
That's not how M$ defines it. It's a fairly complicated formula, but it only involves pieces of hardware that the OS can identify when running, things like ethernet card, mb, cpu, etc., as those have numbers that uniquely identify them. The computer can't tell if it's in a case or screwed onto a piece of plywood (nor does it care).
I've seen some fairly complicated explanations of the involved formulas used by M$ to figure out if the computer is still the same.
If you use windows 2000, you don't have to activate, so there is more flexibility (though perhaps not in a legal sense, they may define "same computer" in the same way). With XP, you have to be very careful because M$ can refuse to activate the OS, and then you're out an OS.