Strict Vista License

For those that don’t already know Microsoft’s Windows Vista license looks to be quite unfriendly to a few groups of people. Mainly those who upgrade their computers on a regular basis as well as those who wish to run windows on a virtual machine. In their license it specifies that the license can only be transferred once which essentially means an owner of the software may only upgrade their machine once.

Further more for the cheap versions (not cheap at all) windows cannot be run virtual at all, and only the Ultimate Edition can be used virtually. This means everyone currently using Paralles with their Mac to run Windows software is out of luck unless they want to shell out $399 for Vista Ultimate.

I imagine they’ll take steps to prevent this type of use however should they decide to do, then I expect many virtualized Windows users to not bother with it. I kind of hope this is the case as well because it should help push the open source community.

My recommendation is obvious, learn to use something other than windows; it’s free. And if you happen to see me at a Microsoft meeting, I’m only there for the free stuff.