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Windows Vista Business?

Nocturnal

Lifer
According to Engadget we should be able to buy Vista Business Edition at CUSA on November 30th. The EULA according to Engadget, allows us to install Vista Business on up to five computers.

Anyone hear about this? What is the difference between Vista Ultimate and the Business version?
 
This is REALLY weird. I'm shocked that Microsoft would do an "exclusive" pre-sale contract with CompUSA.

Link to Engadget article.

These are apparently Small Business Volume Licenses, with a minimum of five licenses. Historically, Volume Licenses are ALWAYS "Upgrade-Only". You are required to own a previous acceptable operating system license for any PC that these are installed on. For instance, you'd have to posses an XP or 2000 license for the PC where you install one of these Vista licenses.
 
This sounds pretty cool for small businesses, they will have the opportunity to save a decent chunk of money over retail.
 
Originally posted by: stash
This sounds pretty cool for small businesses, they will have the opportunity to save a decent chunk of money over retail.
Well, volume licenses for small businesses have always been available. But you couldn't buy them at a Retail store.

Historically, it's been tough to justify these small volume licenses on a "cost" basis. For XP Professional, for instance, the small volume licenses have been around $350. You could buy XP Pro, Full Retail version, from Newegg.com for $280, and you could buy the "Upgrade" Retail edition for $200. Or full OEM XP Pro for $140. The offered "10% below retail cost" is nowhere near what you can save by buying at Newegg.

There ARE reasons to buy volume licenses, but one of them is NOT saving money on the original purchase price.

"He also suspected that CompUSA agreed not to push the cheaper Vista Home Basic and Premium as options for cost-conscious small business owners. "
Now THAT would be nice. It's painful trying to explain to small business owners why they need to upgrade their BestBuy PCs from XP Home to XP Professional.
 
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