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I just stumbled upon Microsoft’s technical guidance for Windows Vista Volume Activation 2.0. Oh my! Taking the length of the documents into account, this seems to be more complicated than deploying Vista.
I really wonder why this is necessary. Until now, we didn’t have to worry about licensing. We’ve a so-called Campus Agreement with Microsoft. We just tell them the number of employees and the Microsoft products, we want to license. This determines our annul fee. Updates are included in the price. So, we don’t do license management at all.
If you are working for an educational institution, I highly recommend this form of licensing. Aside from the fact that it simplifies matters, it is also cheaper than computer-based licensing. Most of our computers are for students. Since the price is based on the number of employees, we get these licenses for students for free.
I’ve never heard Microsoft offering something similar for companies. I wonder, why? Step-by-step guides for Volume Activation would be unnecessary, thereby reducing TCO of Windows, significantly. I think, companies go through this ordeal only because there is no other competitive desktop OS in sight.
I do mostly desktop support at a local community college. We’re just now getting our hands dirty with Vista and are trying to read up on all of the activation options. What a pain in the @ss! I’m heading off to Vista training this next week in Chicago at Global Knowledge’s training facility. Hoping to get some better insight.
I’m guessing we have the same agreement but in case we don’t do you have in your agreement that faculty and staff can get the same MS operating systems and software installed on their home machines. We’ve been checking out cd’s to them and I’ve heard of some other colleges who have them bring their system in for the tech support staff install it on there for them. Just curious what you might be doing. Our system is somewhat flawed as there is nothing making anyone accountable to remove the software if they leave employment for our campus.
Jim, we usually give them the CD, but they have to bring it back. We tell them to uninstall it, when they leave our organisation. Usually, they stay longer than a normal PC’s lifetime. So, we never had a problem with this.
Sigh… I’m having this weird feeling that Microsoft is actually going out of its way to make Vista a huge pain in the ass. I just can’t figure out why are they so hell bent on punishing their loyal users.
I’m just going to stay clear off Vista until gaming companies stop supporting XP.