| MS says you may not. Experience says you can if you wait 120 days.
| Besides, what's a "new computer"? MS has never stated what part of a
| computer is "the" computer. Is it the processor, mother board, RAM,
| case, a screw that got updated? I have even called to activate
| successfully by stating I upgraded everything in the computer except the
| case.
|
|
| Apparently stated more clearly than understood
|
| cf. Win7 EULA
| qp
| License Model. The software is licensed on a per copy per computer
| basis. A computer is a physical hardware system with an internal storage
| device capable of running the software. A hardware partition or blade is
| considered to be a separate computer.
| /qp
|
| Doesn't appear that a mobo, processor, ram, case or screw meet the above.
|
That's an interesting clarification. As I recall, when
Product Activation was originally instituted, MS said
the motherboard was the official licensee. The WinME
packaging said the software was licensed both to the
person and the hardware. Which raises interesting questions:
If I die does my motherboard have the right to assign
a new co-licensee? If so, then surely I can assign a new
co-licensee if my motherboard dies. If not then how can
the software be licensed to the motherboard?
XP OEM says the following:
----------------
The term "COMPUTER" as used herein shall mean the HARDWARE, if
the HARDWARE is a single computer system, or shall mean the
computer system with which the HARDWARE operates, if the
HARDWARE is a computer system component.
......
The SOFTWARE
is licensed with the HARDWARE as a single integrated
product and may only be used with the HARDWARE. If the
SOFTWARE is not accompanied by new HARDWARE, you may
not use the SOFTWARE.
--------------
So if the dealer sends a screw with the disk in order to
fulfill the requirment, that screw must be used in all
installations of the software.
The defining of a "hard disk or partition" seems to be new
to Win7. With Vista it says the license must be assigned to
a single "hardware system".
In fact there really is no such thing as a computer, so
there's no easy way to define the license. So they started
saying "device". And now they say, according to your
quote, that the software is licensed *per disk partition*.
All of it is an attempt to connect physical limitations and
disintegration with intellectual property, as is true with
printed books. It never quite works and never achieves
credibility because the intellectual property is not truly connected
in any meaningful way with the hardware. It could be the
disk, but since most computers
don't even come with a disk, Microsoft has forfeited that
option. There isn't any clean way to deal with it. For that
reason, Product Activation turned out to be a good
solution. It's a kind of legal passive aggression. They
don't need to argue in courts about the whole thing. By
tying the system to an OEM box and providing no disk,
Microsoft has ensured that 99% of computers bought
or built will lose Windows when something breaks. Thus
the situation has been reversed: Rather than end-users
using Windows twice, illegally, Microsoft is passively
forcing people to buy software licenses they've already
paid for when they buy a replacement computer or have
repairs done. And for the most part, the public have no
idea that they're being cheated.