XP and Vista question

[J. Landman Gay]

Peter Alcibiades wrote:

> If you have bought a retail copy of Vista, I believe MS will have no legal 
> authority to tell you what you can and cannot run it on.  This is because, at 
> least in the EU, post sales restrictions on use are anti-competitive and thus 
> unenforceable.
> 
> However, MS can certainly tell you not to run more than one copy at once, 
> because to do that would violate copyright.   So if you do run it in virtual 
> mode, that copy must be the only copy.  They can also make it detect a 
> virtual environment and refuse to boot, if that is technically possible. 

Well, that's the deal, I think. I believe (but am not certain) that all 
Parallels users will have very similar hardware configurations, since 
the hardware is emulated and identical in every installation. The 
hardware configuration is what MS uses to "identify" your machine when 
it calls home for validation. All they need to do is check whether your 
"hardware" is the same as that shipped by Parallels and refuse to 
validate your copy. Without validation, Vista won't run.

Speculation, of course, I don't have a copy yet. I did read somewhere 
though that there are no software incompatibilies with installing home 
versions of Vista on Parallels; it works fine. The restriction is in the 
license, not the capability.

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com