Microsoft tarts up software licensing to fend off 'a few clicks and a credit card' rivals Microsoft is trying to make the dark art of software licensing less complicated and more relevant to a cloudier world – but, as always, the devil will be in the detail. The first signs of a Redmond overhaul came at the end of September when it canned Select Plus Agreement rebates for channel partners in favour of the Next …
"I spent literally more than 12 hours upgrading a Windows 8 machine yesterday and the vast majority of that time is attributable 100% to Microsoft belligerence."
I suggest that your problem is likely located somewhere between your chair and your keyboard. My upgrade to Windows 8.1 took less than 20 minutes...
We too have decided that we don't have the time to spend hours with resellers trying to figure out what we need to license and how much it will cost.
we have XP/Office 2003 and are looking at an upgrade. At £300 a pop Office 2013 looks expensive and most of our users are simply viewing stuff that was created by others. I set up a trial with some users and it has gone incredibly well. So much so that we will most likely only need to have less the 20% using Office 2013 and the rest can use LibreOffice. For Outlook these users will use OWA within a web browser.
Ideally I would have liked to have a Linux variant instead of Win 7 but the upgrade is quite easy.
MS will rue the day they started treated their customers with contempt.
I actually had a vanilla VM move yesterday that resulted in a properly licensed Windows 7 Pro system claiming that the license had to be validated again
Interesting, mine did that when I last fired it up. Told me a driver had changed or something, which is nonsense given that it's a VM running on the same config as last time. Fortunately mine happily re-validated itself on-line. I think if it had insisted on more than that I'd have reverted to a snapshot in the hope that it would stop being stupid. I hate phone calls, especially to large call centres.
From Good Omens:
Along with the standard computer warranty agreement which said that if the machine 1) didn't work, 2) didn't do what the expensive advertisements said, 3) electrocuted the immediate neighborhood, 4) and in fact failed entirely to be inside the expensive box when you opened it, this was expressly, absolutely, implicitly and in no event the fault or responsibility of the manufacturer, that the purchaser should consider himself lucky to be allowed to give his money to the manufacturer, and that any attempt to treat what had just been paid for as the purchaser's own property would result in the attentions of serious men with menacing briefcases and very thin watches. Crowley had been extremely impressed with the warranties offered by the computer industry, and had in fact sent a bundle Below to the department that drew up the Immortal Soul agreements, with a yellow memo form attached just saying: "Learn, guys..."
Those who've not read this book, Crowley's a Demon.
MS want to simplify licensing? Sounds brilliant. I just doubt it will happen. If they want to simplify licensing, start by reducing the variations and making the pricing more sensible (we sell Office H&B to most small businesses because the volume editions are more expensive for no gain).
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