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On Monday 06 May 2002 07:43, you wrote: The status of OEM licencing of software, and what constitutes original machines, or the items of hardware with which such OEM licences may be sold has not AFAIK and IANAL been resolved, but it is at least possible that this user could have installed his previous operating system on his new computer, thus resolving the problems of program compatibility he found.
Not in this country (or the US) though IIRC German courts have ruled that OEM licences attempting to tie specific hardware to specific software is meaningless. Effectivly a licence to run Windows is as much an interchangable component as a CPU, HDD, RAM module or even a screw to hold the case together. The whole idea appears to wind up as a "grandad's axe" type issue.
The Office licences permit installation and use of a previous version of the same product, so there may well be very large numbers of Office XP sales that actually reflect only the continuing use of Office 97 or indeed of Word 2 or 6 and Excel 4 or 5
Especially where these sales are to organisations, who arn't prepared for the trouble and expense to changing (And if they were may as well try something Open Office derived. Which could read their ancient Word and Excel documents with less fuss than Office XP.) -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.