Wednesday, January 31, 2007

If you upgrade to Vista you can no longer use XP

This morning, I wrote a number of reasons why I thought you shouldn't upgrade to Vista. However, Tom Coyote has a much better one. Basically, if you choose to upgrade from XP your version is automatically inactive. you will not be able to install and use it on another PC or dual boot even though you bougth the license for it separately to Vista.

This is what the Vista EULA found here (PDF) says
13. UPGRADES. To use upgrade software, you must first be licensed for the software that is eligiblefor the upgrade. Upon upgrade, this agreement takes the place of the agreement for the software you upgraded from. After you upgrade, you may no longer use the software you upgraded from.
So there you have it. You've bought a copy of Windows XP, you buy a copy of Vista to upgrade and it automatically makes your XP key inavlid. Interesting take on property rights from Microsoft on that one it seems. If you do it you better hope you don't want to rollback.

3 comments:

Scary Biscuits said...

Doh! If you UPGRADE you get a reduced price converting your existing XP into Vista. I.e. your XP will no longer exist, quite reasonably. If you choose instead to buy a full price copy of Vista, you can continue using XP for as long as you like. An upgrade is essentially the same as a part exchange, e.g. when you buy a new car. You wouldn't get a discount on a new car because you part-exchanged your old one and then complain that you can't buy your old car anymore!

dizzy said...

As much as I'd like to agree with you, this point in the EULA is apparently new. The implication here is rollback is no longer possible either.

Andres Guadamuz said...

This is similar to previous EULA versions with regards to upgrades.

Because upgrade versions are cheaper, you cannot use both versions at the same time, but I cannot see any reason why not to roll-back. Unless Microsoft do not allow you to validate your previous copy, I cannot see how they can enforce it. By the way, it is extremely easy to bypass the validation process in XP.