Thinking of donating Mrs F's laptop to her dad - we bought it for a course she finished a year ago, and is now surplus to our requirements (she's since got a smartphone). Her dad's PC is upstairs and he's not so mobile these days; moving it downstairs is a possibility but the laptop with its wireless connectivity would be better (might need a new router as well if neither of my 2 old ones do the job).
Laptop is one of these:www.reevoo.com/p/hp-compaq-presario-a961em
It managed to mangle its Vista so is currently running Ubuntu. I'm going to install Windows 7, but I don't think it's worth getting the full version - might as well save £30+ and go OEM. Unless anyone can see problems, apart from not being able to transfer it to another machine?
I've checked the laptop is happy running 7 by (temporarily) installing our full version; seems fine.
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OEM copies of Windows have always been for new machines. At a push upgrades/reinstalls. Legally you cannot use this. In practice you can. But not 100% legal.
In the past some companies would bundle a cheap Microsoft mouse with OEM copies of Windows to try and make it more legit.
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Vista with 2GB of RAM, and properly tuned can run extremely well, the downside is most are only 32-bit.
I run Vista on my office PC and its more than fine.
If you insist on Windows 7 I would buy the retail version, that way if the laptop breaks you can then legally use it on a PC you might want to build etc....
Something to think about too is that Windows 8 is not too far away.
Of course if you were to use the OEM, you then technical become the manufacturer and you have to support it, in this case I really can't see a problem at all legally. It is against the Microsoft UELA but it is a grey area.
In reality nobody could give a stuff if you bought the OEM for this laptop :) Its not like you downloaded it from some dodgy site with a cracked key.
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You can use OEM 7 legally, as long as you have paid for it. and you can move it around with no problems done so many times.
7 basic is quit light and nippy (for windows) certainly better than vista in any incarnation, and will run happily on his laptop.
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Thanks for the replies.
The laptop didn't come with a Vista disk; there was a recovery partition, which I used the first few times it screwed up, but eventually even that failed. There might be a hardware problem; it hasn't failed with Ubuntu, but it hasn't been used as much.
I think Home Premium (OEM) will be ok; Basic doesn't seem to be generally available?
I should have said that it's only going to be used for email and browsing.
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There's always the various student discount sites if anyone in the household can be very loosely described as a student:-
www.software4students.co.uk/Microsoft_Windows_7_Professional_32_bit_Upgrade_Edition-details.aspx
Although it's sold as an upgrade (so presumably legit to upgrade from the original Vista install) many folks use it for a clean install.
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Windows 7 Basic is original equipment for netbooks only.
For what it's worth, it has everything - and more - a home user would ever need.
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According to the OEM EULA you cannot move OEM copies, on my home personal machines I have done so in the past would never do so for a client. In fact a computer shop in Bradford got a massive massive fine by Microsoft for recycling OEM licences.
I.e they bought a load of old 8 year old P4's and took the COAs of them and put them on brand new machines.
Focus have you thought about getting in touch with the manufacturer if there is a COA on it they are legally bound to send you the disks for a very reasonable charge.
I have just ordered them for an HP laptop which needs a new hard drive and the client didn't have the recovery disks, the total charge from HP? £0.00 :).
If the manufacturer wants a lot for the CDs report them to Microsoft as they are in breach of their OEM agreement, as they have to provide the CDs at cost or below.
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As long as the key authenticates satisfactorily with the servers at Microsoft, that pretty much concludes Microsoft's interest in home/retail users in my experience. When you activate a new installation by phone, you don't even speak to a human being. It's all automated.
Business users, and serial rule/law breaking are treated far more suspiciously and harshly if they break the rules.
Two of my home machines run OEM licenses which have been transferred from other machines no longer running Windows. Technically illegal, but as I say, they are both registered and authenticated with MS, both pass the various Genuine Advantage Validation downloads that appear from time to time, and nobody pays the slightest interest.
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Thanks again for all the input.
Going over to FiL's tomorrow and Mrs F wants laptop ready to start using so we can show him the ropes. Which meant options limited to what the local PCWorld has to offer. Obviously they don't do OEM, and didn't want to pay £120 for retail pack.
But as has been pointed out above, we have already paid for Vista. So have just forked out £90 for a Home Premium upgrade - a reasonable compromise I think.
EDIT: OEM would have been £70 from ebuyer
Last edited by: Focus on Sat 22 Oct 11 at 17:43
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Pitty there was no local computer shops where you live :).
For future reference and this goes to anybody if you have a PC and don't have the recovery disks phone the manufacturer, they may well send you them for free :).
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>> Pitty there was no local computer shops where you live :).
:)
But they (PCWorld) do have lots of nice shiny gadgets. The one I went to is next to Reading FC football stadium, and I saw there was a home game today so aimed to get away before the game finished at 4.45. Except it turned out it was a 5.20 kick-off!
So I had to spend a bit of time browsing while waiting for the traffic to die down. Oh, if only we had a bit more money... :)
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I hate that shop so much, it cannot be moral to charge £15 for 60p cables. At PCWORLDs prices I have around £10,000 worth of Ethernet cables.
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"Ethernet cables" in a rather fetching blue, 1.8m, 31p at Stockton Tesco.
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You have no idea rattle, on one contract we put in an order for 30,000 cables, When you buy that many I could have paid for them with a months wages.
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>> I hate that shop so much, it cannot be moral to charge £15 for 60p
>> cables. At PCWORLDs prices I have around £10,000 worth of Ethernet cables.
Went in there only yesterday for a USB enclosure for a spare 1TB SATA drive I've got kicking around. Readily available on line for a tenner or so. Would have paid £15 for the convenience. But not the £25 they wanted.
I can only conclude it is a shop used by people who a) have never heard of internet shopping, b) need something very desperately or c) have more money than sense.
Their cables, as you say, are disgracefully priced.
Last edited by: DP on Sun 23 Oct 11 at 20:48
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...Their cables, as you say, are disgracefully priced...
Seems to me PC World is competitive for big ticket items such as laptops, but they tuck you up for lower-priced stuff.
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>> But as has been pointed out above, we have already paid for Vista. So have
>> just forked out £90 for a Home Premium upgrade - a reasonable compromise I think.
You can of course perform a clean install of Windows 7 using your new upgrade media the same way it was supported in Vista: tinyurl.com/6zfhtfb You don't need to get Vista working again first.
Basically you install Windows 7 using the upgrade DVD to a formatted hard disk (you format it from the new DVD) but don't insert the product serial number or try to activate it yet. Then you perform a normal upgrade of Windows 7 from within the first install of Windows 7, which you then activate as normal.
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>> You don't need to get Vista working again first.
Thanks Vic but as mentioned above the Vista went AWOL some time ago.
I did the clean install last night.
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No worries Focus - it's just you said "But as has been pointed out above, we have already paid for Vista", I thought you were going to get that going first to upgrade from it!
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>> No worries Focus - it's just you said "But as has been pointed out above,
>> we have already paid for Vista", I thought you were going to get that going
>> first to upgrade from it!
Ah yes, understood.
The fact that you can use this 'upgrade' to do a clean install does seem a bit odd, although obviously it's worked to my advantage here (legally). Is there nothing to stop it being used on a new machine?
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There was some discussion amongst techs on this issue, and I seem to remember some sort of loop hole. I think it was that you can move the 7 Upgrade to another machine, but that computer must have Windows COA on it.
So if this machine breaks you could get an old XP machine, and then install 7 on it using this upgrade.
Don't quote me on that though.
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>>Windows COA <<
Can someone explain what that is please?
Pat
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certificate of authenticity
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Doh:)
Of course it is, thanks Tony!
Pat
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...Of course it is, thanks Tony!...
I didn't know what it was.
Moral of the story: Don't assume people outside your area of expertise understand the acronyms and jargon.
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We in the IT game invented acronyms and jargon for that very reason. make it nice and complex sounding, keeps the price up.
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>> Moral of the story: Don't assume people outside your area of expertise understand the acronyms
>> and jargon.
>>
Acronyms used in this thread so far:
OEM
PC
GB
RAM
UELA
COA
P4
HP
CD
FC
TB
SATA
DVD
AWOL
IT
Care to tell us which fall "outside your area of expertise"?
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...Care to tell us which fall "outside your area of expertise"?...
Well, as I'm not expert in computers: a lot of them.
Try to keep up.
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>> ...Care to tell us which fall "outside your area of expertise"?...
>>
>> Well, as I'm not expert in computers: a lot of them.
>>
>> Try to keep up.
>>
>>
>>
So why are you wasting your time reading a thread on a subject you have no clue about, and in the bargain getting totally befuddled by it as it is full of acronyms that make no sense to you?
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>> So why are you wasting your time reading a thread on a subject you have
>> no clue about, and in the bargain getting totally befuddled by it as it is
>> full of acronyms that make no sense to you?
I often read threads on subjects of which I know nothing or little. That way I end up knowing a little more.
Suspect Iffy does the same.
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Well that's in interesting concept.
How does anyone further their knowledge then?
Or shouldn't we be allowed to do that?
Pat
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>> Try to keep up.
He's too busy picking fault in people's posts and personal lives to have time for that.
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Focus is in the IT industry, so in the context of this thread, he would have known exactly what a COA is.
Rather like on a car fault thread, it is assumed that everybody will know what an ECU is.
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>> Focus is in the IT industry, so in the context of this thread, he would
>> have known exactly what a COA is.
Oh dear - I write embedded software; I understood the gist of what you were saying (and thanks for the explanation) but if I'd had to actually tell you what it stood for...
EDIT: I usually tick 'telecomms' rather than 'IT'
Last edited by: Focus on Mon 24 Oct 11 at 11:18
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Same thing, it is all information technology :). In fact you could argue that the telegraph was IT in the 19th century.
COA = Certificate of Authenticity it is the windows sticker you have on the case.
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Acronyms and abbreviations are a difficult subject for journalists writing for a general audience.
One such as BBC is obvious, everyone is deemed to know what it means, so no need to spell it out.
But another in broadcasting - 'HD' - is less clear cut.
Banking brother didn't know what it stood for until he bought a telly which had it.
Plenty of other examples in other walks of life.
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All jobs have them, sparks use them all the time too
"We can either use a FCU or connect it directly to your CU via an MCB, but we will use SWA regardless"
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Try working for a far Eastern technology company. Then you will understand what acronyms are all about. They absolutely love them.
There are seven IT systems I interact with on a daily basis which each have their own acronym name. Three of them have five letters, and only one changed letter between the three.
Then you have the processes, departments, forms, divisions, even the job titles.
If I think too long about this, my will to live starts to wander...
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Windows 7 OEM - rtj70
