If you want to run Microsoft’s Windows Vista in a virtual environment, via a product like Parallels Desktop for Mac, “things can get sticky,” Benjamin Rudolph blogs for Parallels.
Rudolph explains, “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,” Rudolph explains.
Full article here.
“That doesn’t preclude Vista Home editions from being installed on Macs running Boot Camp, however, since Boot Camp isn’t a virtualization or emulation technology — instead, it makes Windows run natively on the Mac,” Peter Cohen reports for Macworld. “For now, however, Boot Camp is still in beta development, and still officially works only with Windows XP.”
Cohen reports, “The issue for users is price: Microsoft sells its Home editions of Vista for $199 or $239, while Business and Ultimate editions cost $299 and $399 respectively.”
Full article here.
Related articles:
Microsoft’s Windows Vista: Five years for a chrome-plated turd – January 30, 2007
Microsoft license terms limit Vista virtualization to Vista Ultimate or Business versions – October 18, 2006
And this is a surprise…why?
God, it drives me nuts that MS releases multiple versions of their OS. For pete’s sake, just release 1 version for desktops, and 1 for servers. It’s easier on MS coders, easier on third-party developers, and easier on consumers.
Well, for me it’s all moot, because I’ll never be purchasing any MS product for as long as I live. But, theoretically speaking, if I did, I’d use that product in whatever way I damn well pleased to. If I paid for it, they made their money and it’s no one’s business but my own if I want to run it under virtualization. To hell with their EULA, and to hell with them while I’m at it.
BOOT CAMP is not virtualization. It runs Windows natively! So, it’s cool.
Probably, you cannot run Windows Vista with Parallels.
How much aggravation do you want today?
Windows, the best aggravation money can buy.
Dirty pool v10.2
Firstly, it doesn’t seem legal to forbid a person from running any OS in virtualization.
Secondly, it doesn’t seem that Microsoft could enforce this.
Thirdly, how long will it take for some hacker to make this restriction null and void?
Fourthly, how long before the lawsuits start?
Fifthly, how long before Microsoft is forced to capitulate?
Microsoft: If you can’t beat ‘em with innovation, circle the wagons, and call your lawyers.
The real reason is that Gates needed new carpet for his home.
Also note for the Business, Enterprise and Ultimate versions:
It says you are not allowed to use any Microsoft DRM’d content in your virtualized Vista, nor can you use Bitlocker or full-drive encryption.
What is their deal???
MW: they’ve “lost” it
So, Microsoft is perfectly willing not to sell any copy of Vita that would be run in virtualization. I thought Microsoft was in the business of making money, not limiting their revenue stream.Maybe, Microsoft feels beholden to the PC manufacturers. I hope that all Microsoft shareholders understand that Microsoft is a subsidiary of Dell, HP, Toshiba, Sony, et al. Suckers.
We all know that Microsoft feels that EULAs should be followed to the T. Same with pirating software, or installing it on more than one machine at a time.
…that’s why they were all sharing the OS X install CD, right?
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OK. It appears they’re only recommending you not use full-drive encryption in the Vista virtual machine. But they are definitely saying you can NOT access any Microsoft DRM’d content.
And what isn’t well known yet is that Vista DISABLES hardware IT deems to be “insecure” (read “unauthorized”) whenever “premium content” is present. Another little surprise, any video better than 600 x 800 is automatically degraded (made fuzzier) purposely by Vista, presumably to prevent capture and recording. It’s the same with sound files. Vista is a DRM trojan horse. Wait til this information gets onto the mainstream media.
Hairbo
You question has a lot of merit. Welcome to the MDN / Gates circus
We the masochist of the MDN cult, ride the emotional rollacoaster anytime MDN posts something preposterous. Jut look at the previous post, Gates is doing the usual politician trick on the media by inventing facts; MDN does the Dvorak trick on the Mac community by feeding it to us while writing inflammatory headlines to watch us all get excited as we start beating our chest in anger. Pathetic
references please
You can’t use Parallels to run Vista Home Editions? So what? Their name escapes me at the moment (Codeweaver?), but they have developed a Windows emulation program that doesn’t require a copy of Windows. I’ve seen their betas, and they are fast.
Seems like this could be construed as anticompetitive behavior by MS, trying to prevent direct side-by-side competition with their OS by disallowing virtualization.
But then, reading the second EULA, it sounds like it might also be about DRM. Microsoft is scared that the virtualized hardware is going to hijack their precious “premium content” that the OS tries so desperately to protect. See http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html
It sure seems like they want the option of SWITCHING to a Mac less of a possibility for those on the fence.
As a non-Parallels or Bootcamp user, I thought the whole point of virtualization was to run Windows apps, not Windows itself.
Meaning this news would appear to be irrelevant. So what am I missing?
If Apple makes a technology available in Leopard (or some yet to be named big cat) that allows people to run Windows apps in MacOSX without Windows, then this kind of restricitve crap isn’t going to mean squat.
Do it Apple. Nuke them!
And how is this any different than Apple’s EULA?
“The wow starts now.” Yeah, the wow of watching a incapacitated behemoth as Microsoft sink into the tar sands of its stupidity. Yup, I never thought I would live to see the days of the demise of Microsoft, now I have the hopes of watching it slowly happen.
“The woe starts now.” seems more appropriate.
Here are some quotes from a very interesting paper (http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html) about Vista’s “Premium Content Protection” scheme. The full paper is a must read, though it gets very technical in places. This time it appears that Microsoft’s arrogance and inflated view of itself may have led it to fatally overreach its capabilities. Vista’s “Premium Content Protection” scheme may be the longest suicide note in history.
Quote:
“As late as August of 2006, when Sony announced its Blu-Ray drive for PCs, it had to face the embarrassing fact that its Blu-Ray drive couldn’t actually play Blu-Ray disks in HD format:
“Since there are currently no PCs for sale offering graphics chips that support HDCP, this isn’t yet possible”.
In fact so far no-one has been able to identify any Windows system that will actually play HD content in HD quality, in all cases any attempt to do this produced either no output or a message that it was blocked by content protection. While it’s not possible to prove a negative in this manner, it’s certainly an indication that potential buyers may be in for a shock when they try and play premium content on their shiny new Vista PC.
The same issue that affects graphics cards also goes for high-resolution LCD monitors. One of the big news items at CES 2007 was Samsung’s 1920×1200 HD-capable 27″ LCD monitor, the Syncmaster 275T, released at a time when everyone else was still shipping 24″ or 25″ monitors as their high-end product [Note F]. The only problem with this amazing HD monitor is that Vista won’t display HD content on it because it doesn’t consider any of its many input connectors (DVI-D, 15-pin D-Sub, S- Video, and component video) secure enough. So you can do almost anything with this HD monitor except view HD content on it.
Further, Vista is designed to purposely degrade “premium content”, presumably to prevent it from being captured and reproduced:
Quote:
“Alongside the all-or-nothing approach of disabling output, Vista requires that any interface that provides high-quality output degrade the signal quality that passes through it if premium content is present. This is done through a “constrictor” that downgrades the signal to a much lower-quality one, then up- scales it again back to the original spec, but with a significant loss in quality.
The same deliberate degrading of playback quality applies to audio, with the audio being downgraded to sound (from the spec) “fuzzy with less detail” [Note G].
Amusingly, the Vista content protection docs say that it’ll be left to graphics chip manufacturers to differentiate their product based on (deliberately degraded) video quality. This seems a bit like breaking the legs of Olympic athletes and then rating them based on how fast they can hobble on crutches.
The Microsoft specs say that only display devices with more than 520K pixels will have their images degraded (there’s even a special status code for this, STATUS_GRAPHICS_OPM_RESOLUTION_TOO_HIGH), but conveniently omit to mention that this resolution, roughly 800×600, covers pretty much every output device that will ever be used with Vista. The abolute minimum requirement for Vista Basic are listed as 800×600 resolution [but] the minimum resolution supported by a standard LCD panel is 1024×768 for a 15″ LCD, and to get 800×600 you’d have to go back to a 10-year-old 14″ CRT monitor or something similar. So in practice the 520K pixel requirement means that everything will fall into the degraded-image category.”
The conclusion to the paper is precious:
Quote:
“As a user, there is simply no escape. Whether you use Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 95, Linux, FreeBSD, OS X, Solaris (on x86), or almost any other OS, Windows content protection will make your hardware more expensive, less reliable, more difficult to program for, more difficult to support, more vulnerable to hostile code, and with more compatibility problems. Because Windows dominates the market and device vendors are unlikely to design and manufacture two different versions of their products, non-Windows users will be paying for Windows Vista content-protection measures in products even if they never run Windows on them.
Here’s an offer to Microsoft: If we, the consumers, promise to never, ever, ever buy a single HD-DVD or Blu-Ray disc containing any precious premium content [Note M], will you in exchange withhold this poison from the computer industry? Please?”
@toZeke
There ya go…
first release
extended play
better than bad (good)
deluxe
platinum
business
extreme
ultimate
onyx
plutonium
herbarium
sanitarium
best ever
bestest
more even bestest
Since, Microsoft always cripples the home version of their OS, regardless if its via the software or the EULA, that didn’t interest me so much, but this did…
WHAT?! What? Doesn’t that sound suspiciously like if you play your iTunes via Vista that you might find your files corrupt or permissions changes, or that the playback feature might get set to mute or a whole host of other nightmares. The statement might as well stay that, “We advise you to ONLY use Microsoft DRM; access DRM content OTHER than Microsoft DRM could spell trouble for you computer system.