As some of you know Vista is supposed to come out next year and its going to require a big upgrade for most of the users. Now in a move to alienate even more of its customers MS has changed its licensing terms, limiting the number of times that Windows Vista can be transfered to, to ONE. Thats right One, Uno. In the older versions of windows if you bought a new computer you could install your old version of windows on it provided you uninstalled it from the old computer. With the new licensing you can only do it once so if you upgrade your computer more than once you need a new Vista license.
Hows that for utter stupidity. It is supposed to restrict piracy but the only thing its going to do is annoy regular users. A lot of people upgrade their computers a lot and if MS thinks it can force people to buy a new license every time they upgrade its sadly mistaken. Its going to be a pain for everyone involved and the only people it won’t affect are the software pirates as the pirated version will probably have this check disabled.
I know I transfered my windows XP license from my original 350 Mhz system to a 1.1 ghz system to another system before it got its final home in the machine its on now (All the older systems are now running Linux).
If I had vista I would have had to spend additional money to install an OS that I have a license for on a system that I am going to be using. You know what, I think I will stick with Linux and XP for now. I wasn’t planning to upgrade anyways but with news like this I have even less incentive to try it out.
Original Article: Microsoft Restricts Vista Transfers
Update: Some more thoughts on the new MS Licensing: Lxer.com
– Suramya
Agreed.
I think they sometimes take their security practices a little too far.
At first, I used to think that that require registration (getting the full serial number over the phone or online) was a pain … but now I see it as a great feature … in fact implementing it on our products too.
However, with restrictive licensing is way different (and worse) than irritating extra steps to register.
Comment by Vinit — October 18, 2006 @ 11:14 PM
Well, I still think that requiring registration (either online or over the phone) is a pain. What if I don’t have a net connection and don’t want to make an expensive international call (When I am in India) to register a software?
I find it extremely irritating when a software forces me to register online.
Personally I don’t think that adding this ‘feature’ to your products is such a good idea but thats just my personal opinion.
– Suramya
Comment by Suramya — October 21, 2006 @ 5:18 AM