upupnaway
IANAL, but in the past you have sometimes been able to legally install one copy of software on two machines, a desktop machine and a laptop, under the logic that you aren't going to be using both at the same time. More frequently however companies just turned a blind eye to what you did and left licence complience up to you.
MS have now woken up to the fact that they can make a lot more money by making users buy two copies to install on two machines. It's not really new - if you're a games player then you'll often have to buy two copies of a game in order to frag your mate across a LAN, because the game will not run unless the CD is in the drive. MS dont do this, but instead force you to register the copy with them in order for it to continue running after 30 days (I think) are up.
Once you register your copy, MS will send you an "unlock" code which is based on your existing hardware configuration. Up to 6 "minor changes" are every 120 days are OK, IIRC, although the meaning of "minor" is a bit unclear. The exact limits are defined on a server somewhere in MSland and can be changed at any time as they see fit.
Change your machine completely and you have to go through the process again. I'm not sure how they force the old machine to uninstall a registered copy.
[ 29 October 2001: Message edited by: Evo7 ]