Read the Vista Home EULA!

Just in case you were planning on getting a copy of Vista Home and you upgrade your own PC every now and again, beware and read the EULA…

Microsoft have now decided to make a few changes in EULA (which no-one reads) and hope no-one will notice (which we won’t until it’s too late) which means that if you buy a brand spanking new PC with an EOM version of Vista on it, you can only transfer the licience for that copy of Windows to another PC only once.

This might not seem like a problem at first glance but there are a couple of points to remember:

• Hardware upgrades will cause a New Machine event
• Windows Activation is now mandatory

The firat point is most important for those who upgrade a lot as a year down the line, swapping out the hard disk and adding more RAM could be enough to cause a New Machine point. A year later you might want to replace the MOBO and CPU and this might trigger another event but due to the terms of the EULA, means your copy of Windows is now invalid. And knowing Microsoft, Vista might lock you out at this point…

The second point will only affect those who are trying to use Vista legally but have been caught by the point above. It’s not a major issue but for those who are caught and decide to stick it out, it’ll be harder to keep your machine running. Even if windows doesn’t lock you out, since you are now in breach of the EULA, chances are that the daily Windows Activation thingy they’ve introduced will prevent you from getting all the security fixes that will (inevitibly) be coming out.

Watch yourselves gamers!