Vista & the Action Pack - Upgrade only!

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Sure I understand your point, and it would also be valid if the situation stayed static. I can't speak from personal experience but maybe some of you more experienced members have older versions of the action pack welcome pack.

The problem here is that we would need a few members with AP subscriptions that are 2-3 years apart. If you go through them you might find a pattern. I am sure that you would see that when a new OS came out you had upgrade versions of it. In the same welcome pack you would also find full versions of the older OS.

Move on another couple of years and the new (upgrade version) OS just became the old OS as there is a newer OS coming. At this point the welcome pack provides full versions of the (new) OS and upgrade versions of the newest OS.

I am also sure that this will be the case with the XP to Vista scenario. In 3 years Vista will be the OS, you'll get the full versions in the appropriate welcome pack and also the upgrade versions to the next OS.

Again, I can't see this as I don't have x amount of welcome kits but I can only surmise this from 1: the industry will not remain static and 2: my welcome kit has full XP OS's and now I get upgrade versions to Vista. In 3 years time I expect the welcome kit to have full versions of Vista with XP being just a memory.

 

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Generally speaking that's true.
Action Pack, MSDN, SA and all the 'free' MS operating systems are upgrades. That is to say, they are NOT OEM.
You need to have an existing OS before you can install them - they aren't intended for a clean install.

It actually takes the wind out of the sails of things really. Wow - action pack with 10 licenses for XP! Great! Oh, but I have to have a PC with XP on it in the first place...

 

I've now seen a procedure that persuades Vista *upgrade* to install cold on a PC without an old copy of XP around!

Well done M$!

Harry.

 

Yes that is what Madman linked to earlier in this thread or is it a different method you have seen?

 

No, as things stand at the moment, you can definitely do a clean install from any CD that I have used out of the Action Pack and that includes XP. I have done it more times than I could possibly remember.

 

Exactly... they've all been full versions, until Vista.

For the record, when I got my first AP subscription, I received a full version of XP, and no version of Win2K Workstation. Thus, when XP is no longer included in the Action Pack, subscribers will not be able to install Vista from scratch without having a valid XP license.

I suspect that Microsoft is attempting to prevent use of the Action Pack by techs installing Windows Vista on 10 PCs at home without first having a valid Windows XP license.

 

You can do - but in many cases you are not supposed to.

Take things like software assurance. That's supposed to be 'upgrade only' as in most cases is volume licensing.
The problem is that the disk will *allow* you to do a clean install, but from a licensing point of view that doesn't make it right.

MS are taking steps to rectify this as they reckon that something stupid like 75% of piracy is due to misuse of volume license media.

I've got XP on volume license - I can use 25. How many times can I actually use it? As many as I want.

System builers aren't supposed to sell PCs without OEM software on them in the first place, so each PC should have the OEM sticker on it...

 

Yep, volume licensing as we know it is gone in Vista.

 

The Action Pack is not the same as volume licencing - as a company, I can use up to ten copies of XP pro and two copies of MCE edition on any kit I want, old or new. As long as it is for my company's use only, it's fine. This is so that I can familiarise myself and demonstrate things to customers. Well that is my take on the rules

 

I think that is the case with AP.

I did the MS licensing course last year, and I tell you what, I'm more confused now than I was before!

 

That does not surprise me one iota

 

Open?
Open Value?
Open Value Subscription?
Software Assurance?
Select?
Enterprise?
Small Business?
Value?
Value Select?

Aaargh!
No!
I just want to buy software!

To make matters worse, I had a letter just before Xmas telling me that one of my Open license agreements was about to expire and asking me to renew.

Into the pile of 'things to do after Xmas' it went.

In the new year, I had another letter telling me that the letter telling me that my subscription had expired was sent in error, and it should have been thanking me for taking out a new subscription. In addition, the agreement number on the letter was wrong.

Hey ho.
At least they sent it to the right address.

 

Oops! I hadn't seen that. The same link was posted on another site...

Harry.

 

...and as long as you're not using it to host a production environment. If I remember the "for example" FAQs correctly, you could host a company's intranet site, but you couldn't host a publicly-available Internet site.

 

Yes that is bang on correct.

 

I have a question, I'm finally building myself a computer. XP pro is going on it now. Vista will be added at some later date. Now, i've never have messed with an upgraded OS. Are they just as good? Do they include everything that a full version does?

 

Yes they are the same but designed to also upgrade the previous OS, i.e. they keep most settings and most of your applications should work. However, an upgrade can inherit any issues with the previous install, like trojans or mis-matched files, drivers and whatnot - hence the best method is to do a clean install.

One thing to bare in mind. If you do a clean install, the first thing you should do after installing the OS, is load the motherboard chipset drivers. I believe a lot of people forget or ignore this step and wonder why things don't work properly.

 

Just got an action pack the other day, and had no XP licences in it. Im gutted

 

Im just using the workaround posted earlier, coz i still use my XP licences and i dont want them forfeited.