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Quoting Rhia Knowles <rhiadratech@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
They got a local computer shop with the "its tied to the machine". He was upgrading people's PCs, reinstalling windows on the new machine with the customer's OEM windows liscence, and sending out again, only to find MS hit him hard. Joke was, the Herald and Express reported it, quoting a M$ spokesman as saying "Its tied to the case, if you change the case its not the same PC any more"
I think the MS spokesvole didn't actually understand much about PCs. The physical sticker IS stuck to the PC, but the licence is allocated to the PC as a whole (in the likes of mass produced machines from Dell, HP, Acer, IBM/Lenovo etc, there is a signature in the BIOS which Windows checks for against am OEM certificate and licence key in the OS, and if it matches Windows is Activated, if not, it isn't). That's how PCs can come pre-activated ready to use, and how manufacturers can offer free upgrades, as long as the BIOS has a compliant SLIC key to correspond with the correct version of Windows then it can be upgraded.
Although saying that, in the case of my Dad's new Compaq laptop, he got the Windows 7 upgrade and they supplied the licence sticker attached to the CD sleve. It couldn't be physically stuck to the laptop casing and the key had to be used to activate Windows.
So if my case is seriously damaged, shorting out other componants, and I replace it, I need to buy another copy of windows? No Thanks, Billy. I got Mint and PClinuxOS and they dont tell me what i can and cant do with it :D
Um... what would you do to your case so it would short out the components, play football with it? :-D
Honestly, if i didnt have to have windows to run Dreamweaver and Access 2007 (Why do IT courses always need these these days?) I'd be shot of it long ago else...
Maybe you should look into different courses doing Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP. :-) Rob -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html