Legalities and practicalities of flogging old operating system

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In a nutshell, I bought a new PC with Vista Premium 64Bit preinstalled and have just registered for the free(ish) upgrade to the Windows 7 equivalent.

Since I'm tight and dislike Vista quite a lot I was considering flogging it once W7 arrives.

Are there any holes in my masterplan?

Will the W7 upgrade CD be capable of a fresh install rather than having to build on the existing installed copy of Vista?

Will the product keys be different, allowing the two OSs to be used by separate computers at the same time?

Am I legally all good to flog the old copy of Vista? It's on a dell branded disc with the product key on the PC, so I realise it won't be as desirable as a full retail version..

Cheers ;)
 
OEM licensed software cannot be legally sold on. The license is for the original system builder to sell with the machine. Effectively meaning that the OS could only be sold is with the computer it came with (or at the very the least the motherboard). As you machine came pre-installed the OEM issue immediatly invalidates any sale option, regardless of it being an upgrade.

Hope this helps - software and licensing is a minefield.
 
Greenninja said:
OEM licensed software cannot be legally sold on. The license is for the original system builder to sell with the machine. Effectively meaning that the OS could only be sold is with the computer it came with (or at the very the least the motherboard). As you machine came pre-installed the OEM issue immediatly invalidates any sale option, regardless of it being an upgrade.

Hope this helps - software and licensing is a minefield.
Click to expand...

That is correct. OEM licenses are machine specific. If you buy a boxed copy of an OS from a retailer then you own the license and can install it on one machine and when you upgrade to a different one, you can transfer it to that too.
 
Surely one of the requirements of the upgrade to W7 is that you have a valid license for Vista?
 
That's that decision comprehensively sorted, then :LOL:

Thanks for setting me straight :)
 
Go in peace child and sin no more :p
 
The only difference with W7 being that there is no upgrade version, all copies sold in europe are full copies and can be installed without evidence of previous ownership.
 
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