Vista enterprise addition

I am a student at the University of Iowa. Like most colleges/universities around the country if not the globe they get to sell windows software at greatly reduced prices. If i were to buy XP it would cost my $6.

I haven't had to buy anything yet which means i will be able to buy office 2007 and Vista when they get it (you can only buy each one once as far as i know). I emailed them to see when those will be available and they said "should be later February" (right around launch time right?). I also asked them which version of Vista it would be and he said "right now it looks like it will most likely be enterprise".

I know there have been a lot of threads on OC.com about the various versions and i checked out MS.com here but I'm still a little unclear as to what this all means. I would love to get a legit copy of Vista for $6 but frankly i don't want a hampered OS and am wondering essentially what all this mumbo-jumbo means in layman's terms. When it comes to computers i can hold my own on the hardware end but the software often eludes me. Any help would be appreciated.

That version should be fine. It does not include the Media Center Stuff and a couple of other things, but all of the major stuff is still there.

This shows detailed differences between the versions

http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=587581&SiteID=17

jivetrky said:

That version should be fine. It does not include the Media Center Stuff and a couple of other things, but all of the major stuff is still there.

This shows detailed differences between the versions

http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=587581&SiteID=17

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Thanks for the link!

I don't suppose i'd be able to install media center from my XP media center package that i have???

Otherwise, well heck, i may have to put that spare NF3 mobo and extra case/psu i've got back to use

Speciale said:

I don't suppose i'd be able to install media center from my XP media center package that i have???

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I doubt it.

Big feature of Enterprise you should be interested in are 2 very special words: VOLUME LICENSE

I would take that any day over media center.

Not sure how your school is legally allowed to resell you enterprise though. That is for microsoft licensing customers.

yeah, with Volume License you never have to worry about validating. Just a nice little bonus. But i agree that it's strange that a university would be dealing with them. I would think it would just be the Business version, not Enterprise.

Vista business and vista small business don't require activation either

Vista enterprise DOES require activation. The difference is that is that you can activate it from a local activation server, instead of going through microsoft servers. Enterprise is the only version that will allow that.

The are no Volume License keys for any version of vista and no way to get around activation, legally anyway.

my mistake. what's the last line in the graphic from that link above implying then?

http://http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/...7581&SiteID=17

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LxOxSxI said:

my mistake. what's the last line in the graphic from that link above implying then?

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Not sure really, but I know you have to activate Ultimate because I've used a MSDN RTM copy of it. That list says that you don't.

Vista enterprise was "cracked" a little while ago by using KMS (key management services), you ran a KMS server in vmware and activated it with that.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=5299

I take it back that there will be no volume licensing keys, i'm not really sure on that. But according to the above article, you will still need to activate each and every copy.

For corporate customers, Microsoft Volume Activation 2.0 is in place to deliver increased protection and management of customer volume license keys in managed and non-managed environments. “This helps provide a more secure deployment solution with multiple, flexible options for customers using volume license keys to deploy many installations of the Windows Vista operating system in one location. This process can be done in batches or individually by PC,” said Hartje. “These improved security and deployment technologies for volume licensing keys benefit customers by reducing the risk associated with the theft, leakage and illegal use of their volume licensing keys, as well as ensuring that the copies of Windows in an organization have not been tampered with.”

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