Vista Volume Activation

[Empmark]

Anyone out there under volume licensing looked over Vista's new activation scheme? It looks like Key Management Service (KMS) will be the way to go when it is released next year.

What I dont see is how easy or hard it will be to re image a machine and not "lose" that activation. I'm ok with all machines having to check in to stay operating but when I replace hardware or just image a messed up OS I am afraid it will be a phone call. I can't find in the documentation how these things are handled. Here is a link to the Vista site for those who are interested. If anyone has insight on how this will work in practice please share. Thanks all!

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/plan/volact.mspx

 

[markdmac]

Enterprise customers will get 10% of their licenses to be Ultimate edition which is what road worriers are going to want to use to prevent their systems from needing to check in with the KMS server.

Regarding the activations, say you have 10,000 licenses. You will get something like 12,000 allowed activations. If there were 30,000 activations this would be an indication of a leaked key, the customer gets issued new keys and the old ones are deactivated to prevent piracy.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

Check out my scripting solutions at

http://www.thespidersparlor.com/vbscript

 

[Empmark]

Our shop is much smaller than 10,000 licenses. More like a few hundred. We typically stay right in line with licenses (no extras). In the past each year we do a count and shore up any discrepancy. If I understand what you're saying then we will still have some leeway during the year to add new p.c.s and continue to shore up. That would be fine and really wouldn't change how we operate now. Licensing can be a pain...

And just so you know I completely understand Microsoft's attempt to stop gap the runaway volume license keys. I'm just trying to plan ahead and figure out how best to keep us legal. I appreciate the insight!

 

[markdmac]

Big thing to keep in mind is as I stated above. if you have laptops that are out of the office frequently, go with Ultimate.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

Check out my scripting solutions at

http://www.thespidersparlor.com/vbscript