Retail VS OEM Vista

You cannot install retail on more than one computer. The difference is this:

OEM: If you significantly upgrade your computer and reinstall Windows, your license is no longer good because the license was for that specific configuration and machine. Whether or not M$ can actually tell that you've upgraded remains to be seen. (i.e., do they know your specific hardware configuration? don't know yet.)

Retail: you can install Windows as many times as you want on different configurations. But ONLY on one machine. So you can upgrade and upgrade and that copy will always be fine. You may have to call M$ and explain the situation, but they won't hassle you.

Not really. You want retail upgrade rather than OEM because if you change your CPU, motherboard etc you can use it again.

I got Vista Home Premium Upgrade for about $150.

No, because WGA (product activation) would need to run on all the machines. Once it runs on more than 1 machine simultaneously, M$ will get the clue and cokc block you.

that's the million dollar question. at this point no one really knows if WGA sends specific hardware info to Microsoft. in the past, WGA has not done this... or at least M$ hasn't enforced it.

Just so I understand...

You upgraded ur laptop from XP to Vista... and then later wiped the hard drive and did a clean install?

I was troubled with the same question as the OP when i decided to get Vista Premium. I checked every post or article i could find that might help me decide, when i finally came across this article...

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2087792,00.asp

I hope this helps you make your decision as it helped me.

Oh man. Mark Twain. Bah. You reminded me that I have homework on Tom Sawyer.

Here in Sweden, the upgrade version of Vista is almost 100% more expensive then the OEM version.

If I understand this right: If I install the OEM version, I can't do major upgrading on the machine.

If I have the upgrade version I can that.

Is it worth 100% premium just to be able to upgrade the computer sometime in the future?

I bought an OEM copy of Vista Home Premium a few weeks ago. It cost me $112 at Frys.

I installed it in a dual boot setup on a new computer I had just built and on which an old OEM copy of Windows XP was installed. It originally came with a Gateway computer some years ago, and I've installed it on 3 different computers, with no activation problems at any time.

I had XP installed on a new 300 gig SATA2 HD. Just for playing with it, I installed the OEM Vista on a different, older HD in the same computer. No problems with actrivating and Vista ran quite well. No problems except I had to buy a new TV tuner to work with vista.

I finally split the SATA2 HD into two partitions, and reformatted the old drive and reinstalled Vista on the second partition of the SATA 2 drive. I didn't activate for a couple of days, and when I tried, it wouldn't activate. Wanted me to call home to MS.

I called the toll-free number and got in touch with a very nice guy, in India, who had me read off the 9 sets of 6-digit numbers. He then asked if the OS was installed on more than one computer. I said no, I only had one, and he immediately gave me a new code consisting of another 9 sets of 6 digit numbers I had to type in. I then clicked the 'next' button, and it activated immedeately. Took less than five minutes, toll free.

Seems rather painless, if mildly annoying.

I get the impression they're not going to be too hard on guys who build and rebuild and reinstall often. It's a small, but vocal community that could give them a ton of bad press, if they get too pissed off.

Vista has so far not generated the best press for MS. It was obviously released before it was ready for prime time and I think they're encountering some significant opposition because of the high price.

When you get down below the pretty pictures and Aero interface, it still seems to be just an upgrade of XP. They've moved a lot of stuff around, but under it all, there's a lot of XP code in there.