Well that’s something. That was a huge hang up for me. But I still won’t buy. Not yet. I rather let others test bed it and work out some of the kinks before I do.

I don't think they did anything at all except to change the verbiage for the language impaired among us who didn't understand what they said the first time...;) What they said the first time is actually exactly what they said the second time, but in a less-legalistic, common parlance more apt to be properly understood by the layman. Both times what they said was that you couldn't share the same license among separate machines simultaneously, which always seemed very clear to me.

I'm glad of the language change, however, since the idea that Microsoft was trying to force us to buy a new copy of Vista after every other hardware upgrade was so patently ridiculous I was amazed to see anybody interpret the language that way--but they certainly did, didn't they?...;) Now that it is finally understood what Microsoft said the first time, even though Microsoft had to rephrase their Eula language to have it understood, hopefully sanity can return to pundit-ville...;)

I'm always amazed when people try and attribute things to Microsoft, or any company for that matter, that just don't make a lick of sense. Glad to see Microsoft so responsive to it, though. These days common sense unfortunately seems in short supply, sometimes. The idea that we were supposed to buy a new copy of Vista after every other hardware upgrade never made any sense at all, did it? That's why it should have been obvious that such an interpretation of Microsoft's intent had to be erroneous.

Microsoft good, Sony bad.

Thus endeth the lesson.

the terms regarding license-to-device assignment of the retail product

Hm yea just as I thought a while after first reading this. It's for RETAIL products. I get OEM versions because why do I need a box for the OS? It comes with nothing useful to me. sigh :?

Well well, it seems the small but influential enthusiast community can make a difference. Common sense wins in the end, whodathunkit?

Woot?

Where are all the "ZOMG M$ is teh 3vi1!!!!!1111eleventy" folks now?

If it's only installed on one machine at a time, why should they even CARE how manytimes you put it on a different system? Do like they do with games, if it's such a worry- put some draconian copy protection onto the CD / DVD, and require the disc to be in the drive at all times. Not like we aren't used to it. Sheesh.

However, Microsoft General Manager Shanen Boettcher recently told Paul Thurrott that the XP terms were never intended to allow unlimited transfers, and that the clause only pertained to "specific circumstances" like a hardware failure.

two steps forward.. and then a twirl back.

Wow, I have to say I am genuinely impressed. Good job microsoft!

I just bought a new MacBook Pro, but my desktop is still a PC. If MS decides to be decent, then perhaps I'll continue to maintain and upgrade the PC as a gaming machine while I use the Mac for everything else (I had intended to keep the PC only until the hardware was out of date, and then switch my desktop machine to the Mac as well, settling for less game selection and/or buying a console).

speechless....absolutely speechless

Good move, Microsoft!

.
PS: In other news, the wierdest thing happened to me today, my XP Pro needing re-activation after I deinstalled the Cat 6.9 package (for replacement with Cat 6.10), citing to much change in hardware config. It required only a couple of clicks, but made me wonder how robust the whole scheme really is.

(The only thing I actually changed since re-activation in August, when I moved from an Opteron 170 to this Core 2 Duo E6600, was the DVD-burner a couple of weeks ago.)

Cool, now I WILL buy Vista. Previously, I was not going to touch Vista. I reformat software and rebuild hardware too often to be told I can only transfer the license once, for an OS something I pay $200+ per license for.