Vista licensed for use on devices of "up to two processors" only

INTERESTING SNIPPETS from Microsoft's licence terms for retail software reveal that the software maker insist that users must assign their copy of the upcoming operating system to what Microsoft terms one "single device".

The device, the outfit helpfully explains, is a "physical hardware system".

A hardware partition or blade is considered to be a separate device, the fimr notes.

The terms state that the software may be used "on up to two processors on that device at one time."

This may of course will cause much stratching of heads with innocent users as they are persuaded to buy more multi-core and multi-processor systems in the future.

With chip makers happily cobbling together more and more processors to achieve more apparently parallel cores, the definition of what constitutes a single processor may need tightening up if we're to avoid volish copyright cops banging on too many doors.

AMD eight-core anyone? µ

L'INQ
Vista Ultimate legalese (pdf)