#FF00AA

A reader points me to Paul Thurrott’s clarification of the Vista license meme, which makes two.

First, it’s all true, you can transfer your Vista license from a computer to another only once (and changing the motherboard plus hard drive counts as a new computer, well, maybe, maybe not, let us surprise you), but it’s not a restriction — it’s a favor! Because, you see, nobody ever realized it, but XP’s license was even more restrictive, in that you weren’t actually supposed to transfer it at all. So, you see, no reason to complain. (Isn’t it cool how they’re only telling you now that you’ve been illegally using your five-year-old XP copy on your new computer for a couple of years?) Plus, just like I wrote yesterday, it’ll only affect a very small minority who upgrade their computers or buy them without an OS (or switch to the Mac), i.e. computer enthusiasts, i.e. people that Microsoft doesnt’ really care about alienating (I’m not being ironic: Microsoft doesn’t quite need them now). I mean, it’s just like when they, uh, discouraged OEM vendors from selling computers without Windows — who cares, really?

Second, a little bonus: the Home Basic and Home Premium licenses specifically forbid installation under VMWare, Parallels and other virtualization environments. Why? Paul Thurrott asks, and then he answers: “very few people can ever come up with a legitimate reason to run, say, Vista Home Basic in a VM.” And they laugh at Mac apologists. Anyway… last funny detail, even if you do buy Business or Ultimate, you can’t activate the same license both as a regular system install and as a virtual machine, even though they’re all running on the same computer — i.e., you can’t legally have Vista both on Boot Camp and Parallels (yes, I’m always coming back to the Mac, but then that is the main reason for a regular user to need virtualized Windows) unless you buy two licenses of Business or Ultimate. Not that it’s surprising, especially in the context of those other restrictions, but… oh well.