Not to drag this out folks, but I called Microsoft licensing about this. This is what I was told: 1. Purchase PC from vendor x with OEM Windows 7 Pro license. 2. From my normal channels, procure Windows 7 Enterprise (or whatever flavor) SA license, which is actually an upgrade, not full license 3. Get media from licensing site, create image of Win 7 enterprise, use the license code on my volume licensing home page They guy was very knowledgeable. I guess he gets calls from clueless admins like me frequently. I'll be using a KMS server once I get it running.
>>> Jon Harris <jk.har...@gmail.com> 9/3/2010 7:35 PM >>> I would think that depends on the Licensing agreement whether you need an OEM or not and whether the company will gift/resell/donate the machines at what it determines is EOL. I do know that for Educational Licensing I previously worked under it required all machines to be purchased WITH an OEM license for the OS whether the software was installed or not. Then clients could be rebulit to whatever we needed/wanted them to be at no additional charge provided we had media for that OS. If we did not have the media it was like $15. Servers were different but did need an OEM if memory serves me correctly. They would get upgraded as the need arose and if the hardware was supported. That said each "upgrade" was a full license but very cheap going from $45 for Win 2000 Server to $75 or so for 2003. The last license we bought was for 2008 Enterprise and that was something like $110. Jon On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 10:05 PM, Mike Hoffman <m...@drumbrae.net> wrote: Tom The point is that you should not be purchasing OEM licenses, only systems. Then you either re-image using the rights you have from an existing corporate license or you add SA and start a new agreement to update them. There are other ways, but it really depends on what you are looking for and how many licenses you are talking about. With any MS corporate license MS have the right to inspect on site so you need to get it right. We are doing a number of Software Asset Management programs at the moment with clients to help them get a handle on what they have, what they need, and how to get things organised. You can however relax over numbers once you have signed up to the agreement as MS are very forgiving about the numbers of activations they allow you. We tend to see 5x to 10x the number of machines as the limit on the activations and you only need to call to increase that number. Mike From:Tom Miller [mailto:tmil...@hnncsb.org] Sent: 02 September 2010 19:36 To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Windows 7: buy PCs with license or without Mike, so you are saying purchase the OEM license then SA/enterprise from my usual source, then use the codes with that? >>> Mike Hoffman <m...@drumbrae.net> 9/2/2010 2:32 PM >>> All desktop OS licenses are upgrade only, so you buy with OEM and then add SA if you want enterprise versions. Without SA you don’t get imaging rights, but as long as you have some corporate licence then you can use that media for all installs. For activation you can get a KMS server or use the MAK keys from the MS website. We now have images with the public keys in them so we can use them on all client sites. Have a play with a KMS server – it works really well. Mike From:Tom Miller [mailto:tmil...@hnncsb.org] Sent: 02 September 2010 19:20 To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Windows 7: buy PCs with license or withhout Folks, I'm new to the Windows 7 licensing scheme as we are just starting to move our corporate to Windows 7. With Windows XP we purchased a license when we procured the workstations. Then we would use our image with our corporate volume key. This way we had the license and the key. So with Windows 7 and licensing, what do you folks do? I don't want to have issues with activation down the road. And we always put our image on PCs/laptops as they arrive. Thanks, Tom Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail message, including attachments, is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure, or distribution is prohibited. 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