And the rumor is....
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The "enterprise" bit could mean that it doesn't really matter to the SMB, though.
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@scottalanmiller Do most SMBs not use Open License? or am I just spoiled?
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Honestly though with Windows 8.1 I wouldn't hesitate too much to be deploying it in the corporate environment.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@scottalanmiller Do most SMBs not use Open License? or am I just spoiled?
Very, VERY few. Because open licensing just creates more cost, I know of literally zero SMBs using it. Somewhere someone does, but basically none. The only reason to use open licensing is to pay the huge fee for the enterprise upgrade which is basically useless for the SMB market (branch cache, encryption, etc.) It really buys them nothing that they need and the cost is pretty high.
Hard to convince a business owner to pay for the OS twice just to get branchcache.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Very, VERY few. Because open licensing just creates more cost, I know of literally zero SMBs using it.
That was definitely the case in the past, as new Windows OS's needed new more powerful PCs to run efficiently (case in point, my wife worked for the government and two years ago they rolled out Vista to ten year old PCs - after the rollout it took her 20 minutes just to boot up in the morning!).
However, I now have a few old 64-bit XP and Vista PCs that actually run Windows 8.1 very well. So suddenly there is a case for keeping the hardware and just upgrading the OS.
On the surface, replacing PCs still looks cost effective, but you have to taken into account hidden costs like handling the boxes by your goods-in staff, wiping the old hard drives, and paying someone to dispose of the old PCs.
Most of our Windows 7 PCs are 4 years old now, but are still going strong. Certainly, if Windows 9 is a significant improvement on 8.1, I'd be tempted to upgrade just the OS on all my Windows 7 PCs via open licence rather than buying a whole load of new PCs.
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If we were playing UNO, i'd still be tempted to deploy a Skip...
However... I'll have a sticky beak at it first before I decide.
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I'm not holding my breath. Until Microsoft makes an official announcement it is just speculation.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
@scottalanmiller Do most SMBs not use Open License? or am I just spoiled?
Very, VERY few. Because open licensing just creates more cost, I know of literally zero SMBs using it. Somewhere someone does, but basically none. The only reason to use open licensing is to pay the huge fee for the enterprise upgrade which is basically useless for the SMB market (branch cache, encryption, etc.) It really buys them nothing that they need and the cost is pretty high.
Hard to convince a business owner to pay for the OS twice just to get branchcache.
If @scottalanmiller means that SMBs aren't buying Open License for every computer, I'll agree. But if he means they aren't buying it a all, well then I guess I'm outside the norm. I buy it for all of my clients that have at least 10 or more computers so we can use imaging rights (I buy the smallest amount I can (1 workstation OS and 4 Windows Server CALs). Then I can use imaging rights on all of my OEM computers with the same version.
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Even extremely few pay the $100 or so for imaging rights. The average SMB doesn't pay for what they use.
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No reason to pay for something that comes on the Dell boxes already.
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@JaredBusch said:
No reason to pay for something that comes on the Dell boxes already.
But imaging isn't in the box. So that's an additional feature.
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@scottalanmiller I don't use Imaging.
I guess I should break down the costs of buying the box without windows and using VL instead. probably a decently close comparison. -
@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller I don't use Imaging.
I guess I should break down the costs of buying the box without windows and using VL instead. probably a decently close comparison.VL is upgrade only. It can't be used on a machine without OEM. You buy one VL license to get imaging rights so you don't need to track OEMs. Buying more VLs is for upgrades.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller I don't use Imaging.
I guess I should break down the costs of buying the box without windows and using VL instead. probably a decently close comparison.VL is upgrade only. It can't be used on a machine without OEM. You buy one VL license to get imaging rights so you don't need to track OEMs. Buying more VLs is for upgrades.
Exactly - Imaging rights is about the only nice/gime that MS has done with their licensing.
You buy ONE VL upgrade and you can apply imaging rights to all computers in your company with that exact same version. I.E. If you OEM licenses are all Windows 7, and you buy the VL upgrade for one of them, you can use the Windows 7 VL media to image every one of them.
There's no point in buying VL for the rest of the computers unless you plan to upgrade them to the next OS. (yeah I know this is the long winded way to say what Scott just said)
