Licence dilemma

[rickity]

Just brought a nice little box, 2.6GHz sempron, 512M ram, 80G drive, dvd, etc all for £200. with XP home and Office 2003 preloaded. but no disks, no licence key, and the words, if you need it reloading sir bring it in and we'll do it for you, under warrenty for the first 2 years. It seems to be legit as it goes through the update process, but i do wonder about the legaillity of this process. Is this company selling software in a legal manner or just trying to be very very competative and bending a few rules. thoughts?

[Conan the Librarian]

Thoughts here, are that is illegal, strictly speaking. When the likes of Dell acquire another 100,000 Microsoft OEM licenses for a unit cost of about nil, it does tend to screw up the local PC builder, who is having a hard time already. If he charges more, nobody will buy, but he cannot charge less, as the margins are so tight.

Sorry to be the bringer of possible bad tidings, but in this very competitive industry, even the home builder does not have that much chance of making a box for significantly less than the big boys.

Conan

[Daysleeper]

you can pick up your own copy of windows xp for around £50 on a well known internet auction site. I did that when I built my own PC.
Conan is right though, I built it for fun, Dells volumes mean they get very keen prices from suppliers.

[FJJP]

The dealer can buy a special disk from the software house that can be activated by a licence key. He then contacts the manufacturer who gives him the key which works for the number of times he bought. When he has used up the key, it is reactivated on payment of another fee and so on. That way he can install the software many times using the one disk. That's why you don't get disks with pre-loaded software.

The only way you can get the discs is to buy the software yourself and have the shop load it for you.

[rickity]

Thanks for the thoughts, interesting that Conan thinks it illegal but fjjp think its a recognised process. And yes daysleeper i was advised that if i needed the discs i could go and buy it. It does worry me slightly that I couldn't actually build this box for the price I paid for the complete item, including the software.

I did wonder about the need to perhaps report the vendor to some such body as trading standards, on the basis that the software was illegally distributed. after all office comes in at best £150 and xp home £50 which means i got the hardware free!!! Whilst keen to encourage enterprise, not keen to condone blatant fraud.

rickity

[Conan the Librarian]

Well, one is a little bit of a cynic... but everywhere I have seen or heard of similar propositions,(countless) it has been an "incentive" let's say, to buy from a local supplier with no further outlay on the part of the purchaser, providing that no questions were asked.

Some local suppliers and builders though, are postively angelic and the halo above the shop is usually something of a giveaway.

Conan

[stickyb]

As I understand things, FJJP is correct and the option does exist for local builders to operate quite legally as described. Unfortunately it used to be indistinguishable from the illegal copies that also abounded.
I beleive XP has a check somewhere that you can invoke, and this will confirm that your software is valid or not.

Also, there are various freeware utilities around that will extract the license key for you from installed software.

[rotorcraig]

I beleive XP has a check somewhere that you can invoke, and this will confirm that your software is valid or not.The "Tools / Windows Update" process now includes a check called "Microsoft Genuine Advantage".

If you get a message "No updates available" or the tool downloads the latest updates, then you know that Microsoft see your copy of XP as legitimate and licenced.

Otherwise you will see a message telling you that it is not.

RC

[Daysleeper]

In the case of Msoft even when using one master to do many installs they normally have a "certificate of authenticity" to give along with the computer.

try this "PC Legal?" site from

Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/uk/windows/licensing/default.mspx)

[Conan the Librarian]

Last year but one, Muggins purchased XP Pro online and when it arrived, after many attempts, MS refused to activate it, the inference being that it was slightly erm, not one of theirs. I whinged mightily and got a refund, but was told not to bother sending the disk back to the supplier. So far, so good.

Last week but one, XP crashed on me in the biggest way possible and I had to do a clean reinstall. I scratched around for my 2nd XP Pro disk (The replacement that I purchased locally) but got it wrong and reinstalled the errant disk referred to in Para 1. Only when I had installled did I realise my error, but surprise surprise, the activation worked beautifully and I now have, according to MS and the Active X proggie that decides if you are a genuine user or not, a fully updated and functioning program.

Work that one out!

Conan

[four_two]

Until an expert comes along with the definitive answer here's what I understood.
It doesn't matter which copy of XP you use for reinstallation (you can borrow one if you like) as long as your hardware profile matches with your authentication key then everything is ok. As you have already used the key previously they would have recorded your hardware profile (mobo,hdd etc.).
Now I'm waiting for someone to come along and shoot me down in flames, metaphorically speaking of course, it is a pilot's forum after all. ;)

[Conan the Librarian]

Aha!!! Good thinking Holmes, but I used the supposedly "Duff" CoA or license number, that had previously been the source of so much angst.

Yup, still scratching my head, but will not overcook my feeble mind as it will no doubt be needed to get around Mr.Gates' Xtremely Problematical Product in the weeks and months to come.

Conan

[Spinflight]

Microsoft are perfectly happy with people who pirate their software, they even encourage it.

Gives them even more market share and keeps peeps away from superior products.

I really wouldn't worry about it rickity.

Even if you are worried there are plently of access code generators around on t'internet.

Sounds like old stock which they're getting rid of, almost certainly genuine. I've seen similar myself.

[Mac the Knife]

"As long as they are going to steal it [software], we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

Bill Gates speaking of Chinese computer users

[Foodbomber]

In most Higher Education establishments, they have Multiple Volume Licences from Microsoft.
This means that a College can sell a copy of XP or Office pro for £45-£55 each. They all use the same key and, all get logged as auhorised and legal. The same number can be used for 3-400 computers no problem at all.
One would presume that most companies building computers take advantage of a similar scheme. Not sure if there are lower limits on companies using MVL though.

If you dont have a disk or CoA for XP/Office then look for Keyfinder utility and it will tell you the number embedded in the registry.
As a backup obviously!