Understanding Vista Licensing

DownloadSquad has an article on Microsoft Windows Vista licensing issues and how ugly and geek unfriendly the restrictions in the EULA

Microsoft forbids you from transferring the OS to another machine more than once

If you've built your own machine and plan on upgrading your motherboard regularly, prepare to shell out for a new copy of Vista the second time you do.

Microsoft has forbidden installing Vista Home or Vista Home Premium on a virtual machine like VMware or Parallels. If you want to do that you'll have to pay for Windows Vista Business or Ultimate, which will retail for $299 and $399, respectively

Vista's license spells out its right to "phone home" to Microsoft and require validation whenever it feels like it, and the ramifications if validation fails for any reason: "The software will from time to time validate the software, update or require download of the validation feature of the software. If after a validation check, the software is found not to be properly licensed, the functionality of the software may be affected."

Via DownloadSquad