XP - how many do I have to buy?
 

I have 3 desktop pc's in the house - and all seem to have 'copied' versions of XP - and Microsoft know it! Do I have to purchse 3 genuine versions - or can I use one and put it in each each? Cheers...

You can buy one copy with 3 licenses :)

I got my license off of eBay. If you read the Ads you can quickly see which ones are selling proper licenses. I bought a Windows XP CD from a HP machine and the license that came with it checks out. Was only £30 I think.

Your other option is Windows 2000 that doesn't seem to need a license or go for Linux.

How do Microsoft know?

Correct me if I'm wrong but your cannot legally sell OEM XP licences. Boxed retail copies yes, OEM no as they are tied to the orignal hardware. Not that I'm really bothered though. I don't care if you have a cracked copy or an OEM copy.

Darren

Well, they won't know - whether it's an OEM XP license or a retail boxed XP license - so long as the license(s) aren't on the M$ blacklist, you're fine.

The real issue is attempting to use 1 license on more than one machine at home. When an M$ update happens, it isn't just the license that is checked but the machine it's coming from as well - hence if you have a single license reg'd on multiple machines, and each machine goes to do an update, you're fuct.

Of course, you could always set it to download the updates/patches and then c & p them installables from machine to machine. I *used* to do that some time ago before I bit the bullet and bought two OEM licenses of OCuk. :Whatever_

XP Multi user corporate codes are the way forward :D

Darren

Pirates ahoy!

Pirates, what do you mean? I'm talking from a testing point of view which is fully allowed :D

Darren

It does, but it doesn't need activation and M$ don't seem to be able to tell if you're running multiple copies. But expect M$ to withdraw support within the next year or two.


M