Windows COAs - Page 2

This is a great thread with great info. Thanks for starting it.

It's taken months for microsoft to get with the program...(this open licensing, VLP stuff used to be for oems only) but they have opened it up to value added resellers which is what I am.

Just a minor correction, volume licensing and OEM licensing are and have been two entirely different beasts. I'm a huge fan of volume licensing since it makes keeping track of clients licenses, whether it be operating system, Office products, and other Microsoft offerings, loads easier. Only problem with volume licensing is that it's considerably more expensive than it's OEM or retail versions of the software.

Originally Posted by unitsngold

when in doubt scrap it out. You can't go wrong there. You may lose a little but you will be safe.

^this -----

I work for an MSP and we try and push volume licensing as much as possible. I don't have prices handy but I know on quite a few occasions when clients were looking at, say, Office, for example, we were pushing them for volume licensing and they were turned off at the nearly $350 or so a pop cost. We would have clients going off and buying retail copies of Office Home and Business (or Home and student which was a clear EULA violation) and using that instead.

Now that we're an Office 365 reseller, we just sign them up for the Exchange E3 plan and for something like $20 a month or whatever, per user, they have hosted mail along with the latest version of Office that they can each install on up to five devices each. So they're basically renting office.

Personally, considering total cost of ownership, they'd be better off buying the volume license copy of office. For what they're paying for the E3 plan, they get a year and a half worth of Office for the cost of the volume license version of it. It's a good racket microsoft has going. Easier for a business to swallow $20 / month / per user then dropping $350/ per user every five years or so.

I digress... lol

I'm not sure what OEM prices are, I was always under the impression they were on par with the retail licenses, which are generally less expensive than volume license.

I was also under the impression that there is there was only one type of volume license but I may be wrong.

You piqued my interest so I'm researching it now.

That said, we also have a Microsoft Action Pack subscription which aside from providing software for internal use at a very small cost, I'm not sure what the benefits are.