Cheapest way to buy 3-5 Windows licenses?

All-

I am leaving my job soon, which let me use their enterprise licenses of Windows on multiple PCs that I own. Those licenses were verified through Windows Activation by verifying that I was connecting from within the company network (through VPN).

Since I will be leaving that job, my VPN credentials will be shut off, and I will no longer be able to activate Windows.

So I have 3-5 personal machines which require licenses of Windows 7 or 8.1.

Does anybody have any suggestions on where the best option to buy 3-5 licenses for personal use?

Thank you.

 

I'm sorry but I do not understand what you mean licenses are yours?If the answer is yes then you just call Microsoft and explain your problem

 

The current licenses I am using are not mine. They belong to my employer.

I will be quitting my job at the end of the month. So therefore, I will no longer have permission to use those licenses.

 

You may have Enterprise Windows 7, which can only activate with a Volume License key or managed activations as you experienced with your employer.

If you buy licenses for another version, you will need to wipe and reload. Enterprise has no upgrade path.

Here's Pro x64: Amazon.com: Windows 7 Professional SP1 64bit (OEM) System Builder DVD 1 Pack (New Packaging): Software

Windows 8.1 Std. http://www.amazon.com/Windows-8-1-System-Builder-64-Bit/dp/B00F3ZN2W0

 

If you're looking for 5 licenses, you might be able to get volume pricing from MS. It's at least worth looking into.

 

My question, if the PC's were originally yours, what were the OEM windows installs? If there was default installs would not the original license still appl and if need be you could then upgrade those as needed.

 

Another way that you could possibly use: Look into enrolling in a few tech/community classes. Depending on the requirements, you could quality for student pricing on MS stuff.

 

That would be your best option right now with Windows 7. I know in the past Newegg did sell Windows 7 3 license pack but since M$ bring me back Windows 7 I think they only sell Single Licenses now. So talk to M$ and hopefully they will listen to reason and get your a volume pack licenses to buy and use.

 

The other problem is now some vendors are price gouging as well.

Example; Amazon.com: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade Family Pack (3-User) [Old Version]: Software

 

I figure this would eventually rear it's ugly head....

 

You can thank M$ for that one. It happened with Office 2010 and now Windows 7. At least we know this most likely will not happen with Windows 8.x unless Windows 9 is really and truly trash.

 

There seems to be some belief that a volume license from Microsoft is some sort of fantastic deal. It's not. Volume licenses, even in large numbers, have marginal cost savings over the retail versions. Volume licenses aren't about cost savings, they are about administrative simplification. A company buys 10 or 50 or 500 licenses because they are tied to a single key and easier for stuff like deployment and imaging as well as license monitoring. One of the reasons many companies move to the KMS style server managed key stuff is the ultra-simplification. IT people don't need to babysit their license counts. That is where the 'savings' is, not in the cost.

 

I know it is not a huge savings, but it is usually slightly cheaper, not more expensive. I again though say if these personal machines are SLIC 2.1 and windows 7 then putting the stock home premium and upgrading to professional may be the way to go with Windows 7.

Then again maybe these were stock windows 8 machines or a mish-mosh?

 

You've piqued my curiosity - is this the case for traditional (perpetual) volume licensing, SA subscriptions, or both?

 

If you buy licenses 'in volume' from MS they don't give all individual keys. It's either a single key for X activations of a product (MAK), or you set up a KMS to handle however many activations you've told MS you anticipate. For KMS the keys are irrelevant since neither the user nor admins ever see them (or need to know them).

 

So if a company is upgrading a bunch of PCs and uses MAK, how do they revoke the licenses assigned to the old PCs? I'm assuming they would have to do so in order to avoid hitting the activation limit.

 

I think they use Enterprise license....and avoid MAK-what is that?

 

There's no license revoking. Once you type in that key and hit Next, you burn a license, regardless. Even if the install promptly blows up and needs to be redone from scratch, that's a second license. The good news is MS builds in wiggle room for just these situations, so on a 50 activation key you actually get more like 60. This is for Windows, Office, any software MS uses these sorts of license schemes with.

As well, while not actually told, I think sometimes MS does an audit on active installs (maybe ones that have phoned home in some period of time) and the numbers can adjust. We routinely hit a limit on one our Office 2010 keys, but a few weeks later we look and the current activations number has gone down (which makes sense since we often reclaim old PCs with Office on them and wipe them for re-use).

 

That's kind of a shock. If my company used MAK (thankfully they use KMS), I'd probably burn through several hundred Windows licenses (and expensive Windows Server Enterprise edition ones at that) a year just by myself, as my job involves setting up VMs that I only use for a couple minutes or at most an hour or two before deleting.

 

Then you don't activate them. Windows has a grace period, it has had one for quite some time.

 

Even if Windows 9 turns out to be complete and utter garbage, people will not run out and buy Win8. We'll just stick with Windows 7, for another decade if we have to. Maybe by Windows 10 or Windows 11 Microsoft will have learnt. Or maybe not, in which case people will have had enough time to abandon the Microsoft platform altogether. A ship the size of Microsoft will sink slowly, but sink it will, eventually, if they do not offer a product that people truly want.

 

Yes but this is assuming there is, by 2020, still a PC consumer market. I mean if you look at what ahs been done with Windows 8.x you would think the company thinks the end of the PC market is all too near.

All I can say to them is hold out one hand and await for all of our PC's and hold the other under your butt and see which gets filled faster.

 

I imagine the PC consumer market in 2020 will look a lot like the iPod market today - they're still available, but only those with specific needs that aren't covered by a smartphone/tablet will ever think about them, and new model introductions/hardware update refreshes will only happen every 2-5 years instead of every 6-12 months.