Would this be legal?

My Thinkpad has a license key for XP Home on it. It shipped with XP Home but the college put their enterprise edition of XP pro on it. I may be selling it soon and I would like to put XP home on it ... obviously I'm wiping the hard drive before getting it.

Since it has the key to XP home on it, is it legal to download an image of XP home?

The "download laws" have always confused me and I dont want to commit copyright infringement here at college ... I'd be in deep crap.

 

Why dumb it down to XP Home when you sell it - unless the XP Pro installation is to be moved to a different system, or there are academic licensing restrictions on keeping the XP Pro installation on a system that is no longer owned by the school?

 

i second that opinion. leave xp pro on it if possible. even do a reinstall of xp pro and then sell it. you'll end up with more money in your pocket.

otherwise, there is nothing ethical or moral which prevents you from downloading an image of xp home, and that's really all that matters. if you are still worried about it, maybe go over to ebay and hunt for the "xp home cd" without a key, and pay the $4.99 for it.

 

I'm willing to guess that the college version of XP Pro is not legally for resale. Downloading an XP CD is definitely a legal gray area, but I would recommend against it. Too many "downloads" of it have other nasty ware or cracks installed into it.

Try to see if you can find a XP Home CD from a friend or something. You might even be able to use nLite to make a vanilla XP Home disk if you have the C:\I386 folder still on your computer.

Also, if you don't sell the computer with a CD...well, it might not sell for as much of a value since the customer wouldn't have an easy way to restore if ever needed.

 

I think XP Pro should stay.
But if you must gett a new one,well, contact your supplier,told them you lost the original CD,and would like a replacement ,at a cost of course...should be cheaper and safer that way.

 

To get a replacement set of recovery CDs for the XP Home license that originally came with the notebook, you'll need to call Lenovo's support center and order them (no DVDs, those are only for _Vista, apparently); the part number should be 43T8630 for XP Home. Other than that, Greg's post is probably the next best thing, although in terms of not having CDs to pass on to the buyer, I suppose if you went with Greg's idea you could then make a backup copy of the crucial part of the installation and put it onto DVDs (maybe even make the DVDs bootable so's the buyer can boot off them and then write the backup image back to the hdd??).

 

Get the Home discs as described above. The academic version is only valid on a computer (1)used by a student at a participating school (2) while they are enrolled. In theory, you should have to remove it on graduation.

 

It doesn't sound like it's the standard academic version, but possibly a version that the school acquired from one of MS' specialty licensors under one of MS' special academic bulk-licensing programs. MS has four basic academic volume licensing options, three of which permit the licensee academic institution to provide low-cost licenses to some (or all) of their students based on, for example the number of full-time-equivalent students they have if the institution has purchased the Campus Licensing Agreement.

Under some of the student licensing options, the licenses acquired by the students are perpetual licenses that they may continue to use after they leave the institution from which they obtained the license; however, under the other student licensing options, the licenses acquired by the students are for the term of the subscription for which the institution paid, and thereafter the license terminates and the licensed MS software must be removed from the computer.

My guess would be that the OP may be one of those students who got a term license rather than a perpetual license, which means that he's gotta remove the Win XP installation at the end of the relevant subscription period, which is really a shame, 'cause XP Pro is much better than XP Home (I'm learning this the hard way ).

 

True. You need to know which license you have in order to determine if you can leave it on the laptop. Check the campus IT department for the terms & conditions (they usually post the agreement). I agree, XP Pro is the better system.

 

Well the college has a site license for XP Pro and they put that one the laptops. But I purchased my own copy of XP pro which will be going to my next laptop. Their install of XP is ... horrible ... to say the least.

I called Lenovo and it is $45 so ill pass on that.

I just dont want to sell a laptop with an operating system that will get either myself or the college in trouble for. If they have a site license, I can just uninstall all of the software (MS Office, Symantec, etc) and remove it from the domain and sell it that way?

 

Well, then why don't you start with first things first and call the college's IT department to find out if the license on the XP Pro installed on the notebook is perpetual or not. If it is perpetual, then you can transfer the license with the notebook (although you should double-check by asking them for a copy of the EULA - or do a file search to see if the EULA is on the system itself, which it should be).

If you don't have a perpetual license, or you do but there are restrictions on transfer of the license, then you'll have to remove all of the software that's subject to that license when you sell the system.

That leaves you then with Greg's alternative. If the noteboook originally came with its own license for XP Home, then you're entitled to have a copy of XP Home running on that system. Since you don't want to drop $49 for the disks from Lenovo, the only alternative is to try and find a legitimate copy of XP Home that you can copy onto your notebook, and then activate with the license that pertains to your notebook.

BTW, since, as Greg points out, the notebook won't sell for as much without disks, and it certainly won't sell for much without an OS at all, you might be better off spending $49 to get the backup disks from Lenovo; e.g., if you'll lose at least $50 off your asking price by trying to sell it without system disks.

The only other alternative is to find someone who wants a computer to install linux or some other OS they already have or can get for free, because it that case the person would probably get rid of the Windows installation anyway. Perhaps you could turn this from a liability into an asset by multiple-installing several of the most recent linux releases and marketing it has a hip linux machine instead of a dowdy WinXP Pro machine?

 

Legal gray areas aside, as long as the install of XP Pro on your notebook (legitimately) passes the Validation Check, there's no risk to you reselling it. I'd recommend against asking the IT department, since they might not have a definite answer, and since they would more than likely to "play it safe" and give you an unfavorably conservative response, for no reason than self-preservation. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.

For example, if you were getting a book printed, and the fonts you used were single license, the printer would be legally obligated to buy the fonts. No printer in their right mind would spend $100+ for a font they might only use for one job. There aren't any checks and balances to catch them; most font foundries realize it and are happy to look the other way.

 

If you don't want to talk to IT, just get a copy of the EULA and read it - those things spell out the limit of your right to use and transfer the copy of XP pretty thoroughly. If you're still not sure after you read it, post it up here and we'll all give it a read-through.

However, I would suggest avoiding the if-I'm-not-caught-stealing-is-OK mentality; particularly since, as you've repeatedly stressed, you want to do the right thing. You probably wouldn't get caught, but then, that's not the point of doing the right thing, is it? Try a pedantic hypo: if someone kills your four-year-old daughter, and never gets caught, does that make it ok to kill little four-year-old girls?