roc97007's Journal: Are the number of MS licenses significantly overreported?

Yesterday I was helping move around some desktop and laptop machines at work, and noticed for the first time that every one of these units had an official Microsoft sticker with a Windows license key, the great majority of which were for Windows Home Edition, which we do not use at work. (We only use XP Professional or Windows Server.)

I asked around, and apparently all those Home Edition licenses are legitimate; they are part of the cost of the unit. The company then stages the disk with the copy of windows for which we have a corporate license.

I haven't checked yet, but I suspect the latest hardware come with a Vista Home Basic license, which is then re-imaged with corporate XP Pro. (I will check this and update as necessary.)

I'm wondering -- doesn't this effectively double the number of licenses that Microsoft can claim to have sold, at least for corporate customers?

Uhhh

[Captain Splendid]

Not that it would change the bottom line much, but it seems silly to me to buy hardware with one license, then turn around and buy an additional license. I'm fairly certain that most businesses buy in volume and don't have additional costs for additional licenses.

Your point probably stands (to some extent anyway), but I doubt it has as much impact as you think it does. At the end of the day, MS still has a huge majority of the OS market.