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Windows 8 Gets Personal Use License For Homebuilt PCs
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Geek.com: "Microsoft has never really acknowledged or supported those among us who choose to build their own PCs. Windows licensing is usually offered in three forms: full retail product license, retail upgrade license, and OEM license. If you want to build your own machine at the moment, Microsoft expects you to buy a full retail copy of Windows. With Windows 8 that all changes and Microsoft has decided to actively support individuals who want to build their own machines or run Windows 8 as a virtual machine. That support comes in the form of a new license option called the Personal Use License for System Builder (PULSB). With PULSB, Microsoft is dumping the full retail license used in previous versions. Instead it is offering a version of Windows 8 to be installed as the main operating system on a single system meant for personal use, or in a virtual machine running on an existing PC (running any legal OS such as Windows 7, Mac OS X, or your favorite flavor of Linux)."
I hate responding to AC's, but purchase of the OEM license has always been tied to some piece(s) of hardware purchased at the same time. I know there are lots of "workarounds" and these have been pretty liberally sold to home builders even without hardware, but the fact is it was/is a requirement for OEM Windows licenses.
I could care less about being able to purchase OEM anymore. The real question: Is the PULSB license transferable to new hardware, unlike OEM? This is why I would buy the retail licenses, they can be transferred to a new PC... OEM cannot and MS can deny your activation on new hardware if they suspect you are copying it.
Sure there were restrictions, but you didn't have to buy a complete PC, you just needed to by enough parts from a single shop (in a single purchase) to make a PC that would run ... MB, RAM, Processor, storage, PSU plus the OS. Everything else you could get from wherever you liked.
This is of benefit to people wanting to run it on VM though.
TFA is a secondary source. Here is a link to the primary source, with text from the actual licenses:
http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-radically-overhauls-license-agreements-for-windows-8-7000002866/
Legality of the license aside (never bothered to read it, honestly), Microsoft has always been really good about letting you activate an OEM license on new hardware. The internet activation will generally fail after the first time, but the phone system works well - and if they do wind up making you talk to a real person, I have never had one of those reps refuse to help.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I am not sure how it will turn out but my guess is that the PULSB license is for people who want to build a PC for personal use, the OEM license is for people who want to build a PC to sell and the full retail license is for people who want to build a PC for commercial use, perhaps in a small business environment where it is practical and cost effective to do so.
That was technically the requirement, however most shops would sell you the OS for purchasing any 1 piece of equipment which goes inside your case.
That's because there's no requirement that you buy all the parts from a single vendor or as a single purchase.
Retail: This license is portable; users can upgrade/replace their hardware and take their copy of Windows with them. Furthermore Microsoft provides support, and you can even use a retail version to perform an upgrade (though MS sells cheaper upgrade editions for that). For those reasons however it's the most expensive (i.e. full price) version.
OEM/System Builder: The license is non-portable and becomes locked to the motherboard. Microsoft does not provide any support (that's the OEM's job), and OEM copies can only be used to do a fresh install. Because of this it's cheaper than retail.
Building your own computer has, for years, been the only way to ensure you got your ideal machine
Maybe your ideal machine. My ideal machine, on the other hand, can be used while I ride public transit. I don't see a lot of stores in my home town selling kits to build a laptop.
The "any 1 piece of equipment which goes inside your case" doesn't actually have to go into your computer. Newegg will happily sell you an OEM copy with the purchase of a $2 internal power cable.
It was never legit. The license forbids it.
German court decisions are about as valid in the USA as martian court decisions. In the US reselling licenses is not been held up as legal.
Not necessarily. Basically, a guy can build his own version of Windows, and leave out all the cruft, such as Explorer. We don't really need a shell to do installations. Hey, I've got it! Let's reconstitute DosShell!!
http://www.nliteos.com/download.html
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Last I read, they were making a lot of money selling operating systems. It's their bread and butter. They're already also making a lot of money selling other things, so why change a formula that is successful? I think most linux users and definitely most osx users are using the other operating systems for reasons other than the cost of the OS license, so I wonder how many new users a move like that would really attract.
System builders aren't supposed to buy retail. System builders are supposed to - and do - buy OEM System Builder licenses. People building their own PC were supposed to use retail licenses, but instead were buying OEM from resellers who were violating their distribution agreement (they would routinely sell OEM Windows with a mouse, despite the fact that only a motherboard qualifies as a component with which you could bundle OEM Windows).
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".