Print - XP Additional Licenses Go on Sale

As Microsoft promised in late August, the company is now offering Additional Licenses for Windows XP, although at only a slight discount off the retail price. Shortly before releasing XP to manufacturing, Microsoft decided to offer families a way to purchase additional copies of XP through a new licensing program, originally called Additional Family Licenses. The license lets consumers use their existing XP retail CD-ROMs to install XP on a second machine by providing a new Product Key.

"Additional licenses for Windows XP are now available at shop.microsoft.com," said Kristian Gyorkos, product manager for Windows XP. "As of [Wednesday], additional licenses [were] available through the retail channel as well."

The additional licenses don't offer much of an advantage over the full price, however. XP Home Edition, for example, retails for $199.00, and an additional license for XP Home is $189.00--only a $10 discount. The XP Home upgrade version is $99.00 and an additional upgrade license is $89.10. Prices for XP Professional Edition are similar. XP Pro retails for $299.00 or $199.99 for the upgrade. But additional licenses for XP Pro knock the price down only slightly to $269.10 and $189.00, respectively.

To order additional XP licenses, visit Microsoft's shop.microsoft.com Web site:
XP Home
XP Pro

As a defender of most of Microsoft's practices being the result of a good market driven company, this is just assinine. Microsoft is trying to convince people to move towards a subscription based system, and to pay for things that they have not paid for before (multiple copies on family machines), and they should try to make that transition painless.

Additional licences should cost no more than $10-$15! Microsoft is bleeding its customers dry, and it will bite them in the ass soon enough.

That's a lot of money to hand over for a piece of paper with a Product ID on it. Talk about extracting the michael! Maybe Microsoft actually WANTS people to get pirated, cracked copies of XP instead... Alan.

I can't say that I'm really suprised. Microsoft is just discounting the price for the Windows XP media. Can't blame them for charging full price for the license. Legally, you should have a full license for every machine you load it on anyways, whether it's your home network or not.

Now, that's some magic trick. 10 dollars off, and you don't get a box *or* a CD. I bet MS actually makes MORE MONEY on the additional license than on the full copy!

Microsoft once again is way off and oblivious of the Real World Out There. An additional licence for a home user should be no more than say, 15%-25% of the full price - otherwise, no one will even consider it! Or give me a licence where I pay twice the full price, but am allowed to install it on up to five computers, or something like that. That would be a real incentive to actually buy into this. Wasn't Microsoft once famous for being able to really get the market vibe into their marketing and licencing campaigns? Well, not anymore! *** Marc

I've really been angered over Microsoft's licencing schemes lately and this one really tops the cake. I don't think I'm the only one either. Look out Microsoft here comes Linux!