Windows XP OEM

Thats one of the most back tracking, I didnt say what I said, all over the place post I have ever saw. PC eye if you put as much thought into gettting your post right the first time as you do defending them, I didnt mean what I really said. You might learn something.
 
[-0MEGA-];987064 said:
I was reading through Wikipedia, and came upon this for Windows XP OEM usage:

OEM licenses are to be installed by professional system manufacturers only. Under Microsoft's OEM License Agreement, they are not to be sold to end-users under any circumstance, and are to be pre-installed on a computer using the OEM Preinstallation Kit (OPK) before shipment to the customer, and must include at the very least the manufacturer's support contact information. They are therefore designed for installation only on a single computer and are not transferable, even if the original computer is no longer in use. This is not usually an issue for users who purchase new computer systems because most pre-assembled systems ship with a pre-installed operating system. There are few circumstances where Microsoft will allow the transfer of an OEM license from one non-functioning system to another, but the OEM System Builder License Agreement (SBLA), as well as the OEM End User License Agreement (EULA) do not contain any allowance for this, so it is entirely up to Microsoft's discretion, depending on the situation.

If thats correct, then I wonder how Newegg and other vendors can sell OEM versions, unless they can slip buy because customers buy parts to build PC's.
Click to expand...

Not sure if this has been answered, but there is a lot of posts on this thread.

The reason you can get away from it because there is nothing that qualifies you as a professional systems builder. You can be a self employed on site tech guy who runs his own business and part of that can be building systems.

Yes, you are not allowed to transfer it, it is bound to that machine you install it on. However, no one tracks it and you would only get caught if someone turned you in, or MS was looking at some way to sue you, ie you were cheating them out of lots and lots of money. Otherwise, their lawyers could give a rat's ass if some single person buys an OEM copy versus a retail. They still got your money, and they have bigger fish to fry like those people that pirate thousands of copies, or the businesses that don't pay for their licenses.

When I worked for an warranty ASP we were also an official Microsoft OEM system builder, which requires some ridiculous license that your company applies for to have that ability. So, we could add on OEM copies of all software to system builds, be it Office or Windows or whatever.

If a system got returned, we were not allowed to take say Office 2k3 off the machine. We had to sell it open box with that software preinstalled and tied to it, and a lot of the time we actually ate the cost I bet, or discounted it so it was at a loss.

If the machine was never sold, like if our client changed their mind at the last minute and decided not to get it, after the install was done. We could remove it using a special tool they provided. Some uninstaller application.

We also got audited by Microsoft several times while I worked there (about 6 years). They would just drop on in sometimes and audit us, just to make sure we were up to snuff on standards. What my role in it was is that I had to go around to every single machine that the company used in their offices and stuff and pull from the registry every single license key. The sales side ran some numbers with sales and sent that to them. If everything matched they would just leave you alone. I am sure the corporate office gave them information and of course they have their own databases and methods of tracking software licenses.

I used to have this big black book (it was a binder actually) that had all the license keys typed up and stored in it. I then scanned that thing to PDF and emailed it to one of the managers and they forwarded it to MS.

The bottom line is, if you are company making a lot of money (mine was making millions a year) and you do so by selling Microsoft products, they are going to keep an eye on you. If you are an average Joe Civilian, they would care less. They would gain more money from suing a multi million dollar company than they would an average individual. Plus, I am sure if they did go after an individual that would make a bunch of people jump ship, and you would see a bunch of Linux and Mac users pop up every where.

Now, if you are an individual pirating a crap ton of copies of their products they will definitely sue you.
 
That's their main concern more then anything right there. That was the reason for the WGA tool for verifying a genuine MS product is installed and not any whatever.
What is WGA Notifications?

Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications is a program that helps Microsoft fight software piracy and helps you validate that the copy of Microsoft Windows XP installed on your computer is genuine and properly licensed.
http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/AboutNotifications.aspx?displaylang=en

Some additional information about that is seen at http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/ProgramInfo.aspx?displaylang=en&tab=XP

I can imagine you also had to log the PIDs on those systems as well.
 
WGA is crap, and can be easily disabled. In fact I disable it when I create an image or when I update my system because of how much of a pain in the arse it is.

WGA is just DRM, and it is worthless, because it is remarkably easy to get around.
 
Thanks tlarkin, I know I've called up in the past and all Microsoft asks is if you are trying to install it on another PC. Most of the time I just say I had to buy a new hard drive or something, but I only use it on one PC at a time anyways.

I know what your saying though about site licenses and such, if a school with two thousand computers was running off one license, then they should be the ones who watch out.
 
A place like a school or private even non profit organization will see an open license or volume type there. I would love to see someone come on here and try to actually finish explaining what I quoted earlier.

WGA is likely a pile of crap just like Windows Defender and the older MS Anti-Spyware gimic they had out that didn't do much. Why do you think SP3 sees over 1,000 fixes for XP? Since XP is getting a longer life to some degree they finally fixed the problems that have been seen all along just as the now older version of Windows is about to wane away.
 
There is no special licenses for a site license, it is just a site license, and you tell them approximately how many clients and that reflects the cost of the license. You are looking at like close to a 100k per a year for an unlimited client site license of Windows, which is just freaking ridiculous.

Educational institutions get the same thing, but at a slight educational discount. My old work had an MSDN subscription that gave us unlimited installs of Server 2k3, Win XP Pro, Vista business, Office 2k3 and office 2k7, and serer 2k7. I know it costs nearly 100k for that subscription, and I am not sure how long it lasted, probably a year or two at the max.

Those are the people MS goes after, and I can guarantee you, NOBODY, uses Symantec's Ghost legally. They charge you per a client, and that gets freaking expensive!
 
Outrageous seems to fit those better! I never even bother with Ghost since I simply go ahead and perform a clean install when upgrading a drive. Often I'll simply burn a set of data dvds to see additional backup there as well as having more then one drive/partition to work with.

MS makes the money while the companies simply write the expenses off as a deduction for the costs of doing business as far as those types of subscriptions go. For something far less elaborate and obviously far more within the reason of the smaller "mom+pop" type businesses that need multiple machines the latest option available is the Get Genuine Kit now seen at http://www.microsoft.com/india/originalsoftware/home/tools_and_resources_1/great_offers.aspx
 
yeah, but you aren't going to go to say, 10,000 machines and put an installer DVD into each one and load the OS by hand. You are going to use some sort of mass multi casting imaging solution to get it done right, and efficiently.

Ghost is a great product. I've used it and I'd even recommend it, however it is ridiculously expensive for an enterprise solution.

For a small business I'd recommend DRBL, but anything larger I say you have to use Ghost, or go open source with OS X or Linux and well, you then dabble in lack of windows support. However, I am digressing, that is a whole different topic all together.

Are you from India? The site you linked was in Rupees.......
 
I don't you would want to spend 20,000 hours installing Windows on 10,000 individual systems as well as all of the office type and other softwares to be used there. That's a totally a separate environment then working with one individual desktop pc where even MS provides a list of generic numbers until Windows is up and running to then see the actual product number entered as well as preactivation proceedures under volume licensing.

Ghost is the big name for the longest time as far as drive imaging goes. Their antivirus is at the bottom with McAfee while that one stands out. When dealing with softwares for corporate over small business you have to expect the large price tags seen there where you pay through the nose. How you worked Acronis at all?
 
Acronis is a great cheaper alternative, but in all honesty, Ghost does it best. It works in virtual environments, you can create PEs, migrate them to images, etc. Slipstream drivers, netboot, blah blah blah

Ghost only does imaging though. Other suites offer imaging and package deployment. It depends on what you want to spend.
 
Or the budget you have available that is. Any large company will spend the higher prices for the Pro versions of any software to meet their needs while a small shop or private user will have to watch expenses according to their own. Since you are working far more with these types of softwares plus Ghost already having a long time rep I figured I would run Acronis by you since that has a good rep as well.

Most imaging softwares would mainly be used by companies having volume licensing there for the multiple systems along with servers. For private users the idea of preserving data more then anything off of one drive simply being upgraded or replaced before failing would be the main application there. When changing drives however you still have to plan on a fresh install of Window for the stand alone pc.
 
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