[lbo-talk] Vista Basic and Premium are no-no's on Parallels for Mac

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sat Feb 3 08:23:00 PST 2007


[from IP - Interesting People, not Intellectual Property]

From: Steve Goldstein <steve.goldstein at cox.net> Date: February 3, 2007 12:19:08 AM EST To: "David Farber [IP]" <dave at farber.net>, dewayne at warpspeed.com (Dewayne Hendricks) Subject: Vista Basic and Premium are no-no's on Parallels for Mac

Running Vista in Parallels - The Big Gotcha by John Martellaro, 12:55 PM EST, January 31st, 2007 Parallels is alerting its customers that, with the introduction of Vista, Microsoft has complicated things substantially in the Vista End User License Agreement (EULA) regarding the virtualization environment. In a communication with TMO on Wednesday, Ben Rudolph, the Parallels Marketing Manager pointed out that Microsoft has set some "very specific, and restrictive, guidelines on when and how Vista can be run in a virtual machine." Parallels Desktop is the #2 selling software for Macs (behind Microsoft Office). It allows Macintosh users to run Mac OS X and Windows side-by-side using virtualization technology. The crux of the matter is that the least expensive versions of Vista, the Home Basic and Home Premium are not licensed for use in a virtualization environment. This will force customers who want to run Vista within Parallels into, at least, the Business version of Vista which retails for $299. It gets worse. The Vista EULA goes on to say: "USE WITH VIRTUALIZATION TECHNOLOGIES. You may use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system on the licensed device. If you do so, you may not play or access content or use applications protected by any Microsoft digital, information or enterprise rights management technology or other Microsoft rights management services or use BitLocker. We advise against playing or accessing content or using applications protected by other digital, information or enterprise rights management technology or other rights management services or using full volume disk drive encryption."

This would appear to preclude the use of Vista for things like watching DRM'd video content including the new Netflix service. But the dust has not settled and the complete EULA interpretation will become clearer in time.

http://parallelsvirtualization.blogspot.com/2007/01/vista-is-here-so- what-does-it-mean-for.html

Microsoft has released a new EULA (End User License Agreement) that states that only certain versions of Vista - Business and Ultimate (and Enterprise for corporate customers) are eligible to be run in a virtual machine. The EULA says that Home Basic and Home Premium CANNOT be run in a virtual machine.

Here's the tecnical legalese from the EULAs: For Vista Home Basic and Home Premium Editions: "USE WITH VIRTUALIZATION TECHNOLOGIES. You may not use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system."

For Vista Enterprise and Ultimate Editions: "USE WITH VIRTUALIZATION TECHNOLOGIES. You may use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system on the licensed device. If you do so, you may not play or access content or use applications protected by any Microsoft digital, information or enterprise rights management technology or other Microsoft rights management services or use BitLocker. We advise against playing or accessing content or using applications protected by other digital, information or enterprise rights management technology or other rights management services or using full volume disk drive encryption."

In short, this means that if you're a user and you want to run Vista virtually, you MUST buy the highest end versions of Vista, or you'll be in violation of the Microsoft EULA.

Here are the price points for each version:

* Home Basic $199 * Home Premium $239

* Business $299

* Ultimate $399

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