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PC enthusiasts' clamour gets major change in Windows Vista EULA

by Bob Crabtree on 3 November 2006, 04:46

Tags: Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)

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The Windows Vista Blog


News: Revision to Windows Vista retail licensing terms


Posted by Nick White on Thursday, November 02, 2006 1:44 PM

I’m very pleased to let you know you this morning (or afternoon, or evening, depending on where you are when you read this) that the Windows division has revised the retail license terms for Windows Vista in a significant way. Namely, the terms regarding license-to-device assignment of the retail product (including Home Basic, Home Premium, Business and Ultimate) now read as follows:

You may uninstall the software and install it on another device for your use. You may not do so to share this license between devices.

You can find the newly-revised retail license terms here, as I’m sure you’ll want to read them for yourself.

Our intention behind the original terms was genuinely geared toward combating piracy; however, it’s become clear to us that those original terms were perceived as adversely affecting an important group of customers: PC and hardware enthusiasts. You who comprise the enthusiast market are vital to us for several reasons, not least of all because of the support you’ve provided us throughout the development of Windows Vista. We respect the time and expense you go to in customizing, building and rebuilding your hardware and we heard you that the previous terms were seen as an impediment to that -- it’s for that reason we’ve made this change. I hope that this change provides the flexibility you need, and gives you more reason to be excited about the upcoming retail release of our new operating system.



HEXUS Forums :: 21 Comments

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As long as I can upgrade my system every 6-12 months for the next five years and never have but “re-buy” Vista I'll be happy.
Just as it should be.
This is certainly a step in the right direction, but way short of reasonable. The fact remains, as stated in the article, that the Ultimate edition is overpriced and the 2 remaining limitations should not be part of any fair EULA.

The fact that its not possible to install the same version of Vista on a partitioned hard drive is just silly. As MS have said some people like to have one heavily optimised install and one not, thats not an unreasonable thing to do, so why should we pay for the same prodcut twice when its essentially on the same single hard drive!!
Especially when you can only use one install on that system at a time.
Is it still the case that Vista can only be installed a small number of times and thats it - as read somewhere?