Wonder if I could do the same thing with our XP Machines at work, I get them with XP Home on and then install our VLK version of XP Pro...
Thats £2500.....
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Wonder if I could do the same thing with our XP Machines at work, I get them with XP Home on and then install our VLK version of XP Pro...
Thats £2500.....
Unfortunatley I don't think that would be an option. We use a VLK version and they are normally an upgrade licence, even though you get the full install CD. Generally the VLK licence allows you to install XP on the assumption that you already have a copy of windows with a licence to upgrade from. That is what we have at work so we tend to order our Dells with Home as it is cheaper. It also means that if we ever want to sell machines on we can put XP home on and send them out as a fully working licenced machine.
We'll see, my chap at Dell says he'll look into it and get back to me..
I wonder what each copy costs dell?
This sort of thing has been going on among a few Linux zealots for a while. Obviously Dell has someone smart in their CS division who knew about it and also knew that anyone prepared to take this step was probably armed with exactly the sort of evidence this guy had. Also, they probably have good enough contact with MS that they can check if the product key they sent him has been used to activate XP. So rather than take a hit in the press, they just paid him off. The policy might change if too many people tried to climb on the bandwagon, but it's been a year or two since the first big coverage of someone doing this in Australia hit, so I suppose there hasn't been too much of this going on.
VLK licences are all explicitly upgrades only, you won't get a refund for your OEM licence.