Microsoft Licensing

[pcservicenetwork]

Hi all

I have a customer who has requested I upgrade their office package from XP to 2007. They are not keen on the £3 plus price tag for 10 versions of the software, and they do not have all the neccessary licenses/disks for me to do an upgrade version on each of their PC's (the licenses have been lost).

My question is, can I buy OEM software, along with some hardware, and use this instead? All of the said machines would beneift from an upgrade, so wouldn't be a bad idea.

The Microsoft website has been useless to me so far!

Thanks
Dave

 

[obscure]

Why not simply retrieve the keys using one of the many tools out there http://www.petri.co.il/quickly_retrieve_windows_cd_key.htm or http://www.skaro.net/cd-keyreader/ or http://www.techmixer.com/windows-license-key-and-product-key-finder-license-crawler/

I expect a trawl through download.com would throw up a lot more that would solve the problem. Unless of course your customer didn't actually lose the licenses.

 

[wood1e2]

Why not switch to Open Office, free to use and better...

 

[pcservicenetwork]

I hope it is that they just lost the licenses!

Would this stand up to a inspection by licensing authorities?

 

[FireFleur]

Be careful - you will have the BCS and FAST on your back soon

You need to check that they have all the licenses, there is quite a lot of communication back to Redmond nowadays, on windows systems.

I would advise you offer them an OpenSource alternative.

OEM is for installation on a new host from what I understand of it, but here is a MSDN blog on it:

http://blogs.msdn.com/mssmallbiz/archive/2005/09/07/461961.aspx

 

[pcservicenetwork]

Ok, read the blog and it is clear the old loophole is gone, so that the RAM idea out of the window.

As for the OS soltutions, I initially suggested Open Office and they stated they wanted Microsoft Office.

So now the option is to buy upgrade versions and install them. What about not having the paper license? Is this an issue, or does it just require to a have a valid license code used at installation?

 

[Dwebs-Ltd]

Dump the office licenses check to see if they are the same, also verify what type of license they are OEM, Retail etc codes are on MS site.

If all the key's are the same then it's not legal unless they have a VLK type agreement. If the key's appear in google then they will be illegal.

If it's for a business you can't install office home / student edition as its not for business

When we go to a business we run winaudit plus jelly bean key finder on each machine dump the output to pdf then review all the data later. Winaudit is freeware and grabs tons of info about each machine.

 

[FireFleur]

Paper license doesn't matter too much the code does though.

I think there is a place to check if the code is legitimate, I would advise you do that off site from the client just in case.

The paper license does lend itself to the legitimacy of the license though, people can sell on a piece of software but keep the code, and that can be detected.

http://www.builderau.com.au/news/so...oftware-license-/0,339028227,339131043,00.htm

That is back in 2004, I think if you just try to patch the systems now, MS will know if the code is being used elsewhere.

The main problem is people using it outside of the office on home machines, best to check if that is the case first.

 

[computer storm]

Hello,

First how many machines do you need office installed on, if it a lot i would suggest volume license with software assurance as this will allow you to upgrade your office product when ever you want say to 2007 or when a new one is released.

If you do not have a lot of machines to install the software on to then i would say just get the upgrades.

 

[BITS]

Buy MS Works for all machines then upgrade that to the full version - not much more than OEM but means they will be correctly licensed plus the license will not be tied to the machine as in OEM plus they get mobile use i.e. they can install the same copy on their desktop and laptop.

 

[pcservicenetwork]

Hi all

Thanks very much for your help, matter now resolved!

Dave