upgrade of academic XP professional to Vista

[Tom Garcia]

Hello,

I currently use Windows XP professional with an academic upgrade licence,
retail packaged product. I am still a student. What are my options for
upgrade to Vista ? Ideally, I would choose a clean Ultimate upgrade -- is
such an academic license in the pipeline?

Secondly, I currently have a 32 bit machine. Since I would not be buying an
OEM version, would it be a problem to later transfer the licence to a 64 bit
machine and install the 64 bit version, if I were to upgrade ?

Thanks for the advice,

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi Tom,

In general terms, academic versions do not qualify for upgrades, however
your university may have a license to do so (or will eventually, it's a
question for your tech guys). While I'm certain there is some sort of
academic license for Vista being offered to institutions, I've not seen
anything on it yet.

On your other question, I am not certain but I believe the answer to be yes.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Mike]

Hello,

I currently use Windows XP professional with an academic upgrade licence,
retail packaged product. I am still a student. What are my options for
upgrade to Vista ? Ideally, I would choose a clean Ultimate upgrade -- is
such an academic license in the pipeline?

Secondly, I currently have a 32 bit machine. Since I would not be buying
an OEM version, would it be a problem to later transfer the licence to a
64 bit machine and install the 64 bit version, if I were to upgrade ?

Thanks for the advice,

Tom,

I'm sure upgrades will be available through all of the normal academic
suppliers (journeyed.com, etc.). As far as qualifying for an upgrade, I'm
not sure what the license reads, but there is no difference between the bits
on an academic version and retail version of XP and they use the same keys,
so there's no way for the Vista installer to know whether or not the XP
disc you insert to validate is an academic version.

As far as switching to 64 bit later, I'd check with MS before spending any
money with that plan. I know you're allowed to transfer to a new system, but
I haven't heard anything about switching versions (even just X86 to X64)
being OK.

-Mike

 

[Tom Garcia]

Hi Tom,

In general terms, academic versions do not qualify for upgrades,

Thanks for the response; is there a location on Microsoft's site clarifying
this ? noting this is the packaged product provided by an academic reseller,
not bought from a university volume licensing program. In my current eula,
the only comment pertaining to the academic edition is:

11. ACADEMIC EDITION SOFTWARE. To use
Software identified as "Academic Edition" or "AE," you
must be a "Qualified Educational User." For
qualification-related questions, please contact the Microsoft
Sales Information Center/One Microsoft Way/Redmond, WA
98052-6399 or the Microsoft subsidiary serving your country.

The Vista Home/Premium/Ultimate EULA on Microsoft's site makes no mention of
academic editions whatsoever.

The only evidence I can find related to different treatment of academic
editions is that while e.g. Office 2003 Academic is explicitly listed as
part of the Upgrade Guarantee programme, XP Pro is not. In Australia:
http://www.microsoft.com/australia/windows/terms.mspx

Cheers,

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi Tom,

I have not been able to find anything concrete yet, but am going with what I
know of previous practices for academic licenses for Windows. Office
products are handled very differently. I am hedging towards their (Windows
license) not qualifying for upgrade eligibility as has been the past
practice rather than have someone purchase an upgrade disk only to find out
they have no way of using it.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org