Responding to the myriad complaints over ambiguities and outright uncool (that's a technical term) licensing terms, Microsoft has revised the Vista retail license to remove some of the most major causes of complaint. A previous version of the Windows Vista retail license restricted the number of times you may transfer Vista from one device to another. The license read: "The first user of the software may reassign the license to another device one time. If you reassign the license, that other device becomes the 'licensed device'." The new license has removed this language relating to device transfers.
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Member since:2006-04-20
I think those that view Microsoft as some kind of evil, demonic tool of repression is a tad melodramatic.
Microsoft, like any large corporation wanting to increase its profits, will always test the boundaries to see what they can get away with, but they are not going to risk unnecessary flack (or even potential lawsuits) by going too far if their source of income (their customers) are not happy. Since most copies of Windows are going to be OEM, they really lose very little by allowing a bit of latitude to those customers who by the retail boxed editions, since if they didn't, they would lose a small but very important base of enthusiast users.
People seem to ascribe motives to MS that it doesn't have - they are simply trying to protect their investments (their attempts to do this are arguably misguided), but it is doubtful that they have some sinister intent to deprive people of their rights, although that may sometimes be the end result of their policies.
Member since:
2005-06-30
can't... control... ARG!!!
I can't help but be skeptical, like ubit and abdavidson above, but with all the strange things that Microsoft has been doing lately (listening to customers?!?) I also can't help but feel that they might actually not be so bad after all. Maybe they aren't trying to fleece and take advantage of their customers at every turn... maybe they're just... misguided?
We'll see I suppose.