XPe Licensing - "block" of licenses?

[Guest]

I'm helping a client develop XPe images for machines on which they will load
their own in-house application and then sell to their customers. As such,
any given machine may have the XPe loaded on it, uninstalled, and re-loaded a
few times before actually being sold to a customer. At the time that it
actually gets shipped to the customer, THAT is the time that the XPe needs to
be licensed.

How can this best be done? Would my client buy a "block" of licenses from
Microsoft in advance? Can they install XPe onto a box to test it with the
app without also having to assign a license key to it? They don't want to
"waste" a license on a box that might get re-formatted and re-installed...
Where can I get answers to such licensing questions?

Thanks.

 

[Savant]

Hello Galiste,
I am not an MVP but an XPE developer.

We are going through the same procedure. We have bought XPE licenses
with being used. Machines are being developed and test images are being
depoyed on them with evaluation version of XPE. If the images expire
after four months, we reinstall the images and its working fine for us.
Why dont you adopt this working method?
If you have problem with four-months expiration of XPE, you can create
one image with one license and deploy it on your test machine. Although
before shipping you would paste a COA etiquette on each machine for
validating your license.
I agree with you that with microsoft, its not easy to find answers to
licensing questions and I rely on this newsgroup for most of them.

With my experience and knowledge I can tell you that there is no other
method of licensing XPE image other than putting your key in Target
designer. You always have to license your image before deploying it.

Hope someone would rectify if I made the wrong statements,

 

[Guest]

If you've entered the PID into Target Designer when you built your image, it
is in essence already licensed. The only thing you need to do to stay legal
is make certain that each box sold has a COA sticker on it before it leaves
your hands. The PID on the COA sticker does not even need to match the PID
in the image, as long as it's there. Recently the COA stickers being sold
don't even come with a PID number on them, instead a card is included with
the stickers with a single PID to be used.

Or if you want to release a "demo" unit for your customer to test his
software on without using a license, simply dont type the PID into Target
Designer and the image will blue screen after 90-180 days.

It is pretty hard to "waste" a license under this format, the image can be
installed, removed, changed, and reinstalled as many times as you need soo
long as the box has it's COA sticker affixed.

 

[Guest]

Couple of follow-ups:

If you've entered the PID into Target Designer when you built your image, it
is in essence already licensed. The only thing you need to do to stay legal
is make certain that each box sold has a COA sticker on it before it leaves
your hands.

So, the customer could purchase/license one copy of XPe Studio to build as
many images for as many computers as they want... so long as they also
purchase COA stickers to go on each of those machines?

Or if you want to release a "demo" unit... simply dont type the PID into Target
Designer and the image will blue screen after 90-180 days.

In Target Designer, is this the same thing as going to Configuration > Build
Target Image... and selecting Build Type "Debug" instead of Build Type
"Release"?

 

[Guest]

So, the customer could purchase/license one copy of XPe Studio to build as
many images for as many computers as they want... so long as they also
purchase COA stickers to go on each of those machines?

Essentially, yes. Each device with a build of the OS must also carry it's
own COA.

In Target Designer, is this the same thing as going to Configuration > Build
Target Image... and selecting Build Type "Debug" instead of Build Type
"Release"?

No. It's under the Settings tree in your project under "Run-Time Image
Licensing". In the same area where you specify the target drive and size.
If you do not enter a product ID in that box, the image is built as a demo,
and will blue screen after 90 or 180 days depending on how it's setup. (I
don't remember what exactly determined the time period.) You can use this to
distribute an image to test hardware/software, or demo features to a client.
If you do enter a product ID in that box then any system you install it on
will legally require a COA to accompany it.

Also, if you happen to be using the trial version of the XPe tools you will
not see the "Run-Time Image Licensing" box. All builds from the trial tools
are demo builds.

 

[JT]

You raise some good questions that can best be answered your local MS
Windows Embeddded Distributor. Who did you buy the XPE toolkit from. They
are a distributor and should be able to answer this question for you.
Or you could consult the MS OEM Customer License Agreement for details.

Regards
Jeff Trager

 

[Guest]

If you do enter a product ID in that box then any system you install it on
will legally require a COA to accompany it.

Just to clarify... You could build 20 runtime images all with the same PID,
as long as they each have their own COA, correct?

 

[Guest]

Also... what then is the Build Type "Debug" for?

 

[Guest]

Just to clarify... You could build 20 runtime images all with the same PID,
as long as they each have their own COA, correct?

Yup, correct.

 

[KM]

Galisteo8,

The Debug configuation was meant to be able to create checked builds of XPe
(where you can use the debug bits of OS components by default) but the debug
repository has never been provided by Microsoft. So for now it is yet
useless option of TD.

Km