We have a plan to purchase 400 or so desktops that come with Windows OEM licensing. As much as we would like to avoid entering each license into Windows. Is that the only option we have if we have no intentions on purchasing licensing to go Enterprise through the EA or Software assurance. The main factor for this is cost associated, what do you all generally do? This would mean we would have to go with deploying Windows 7 Pro (which should not be a problem right?) Thank you for the help.

Typically (but not always) OEM installs are pre-activated, so you wouldn't have to enter the license key for any of the 400 machines, if that's what you're asking. Also: Home Basic, Home Premium and Ultimate are available as OEM versions as well, so you wouldn't absolutely have to use Pro.

What if we plan on customizing Windows 7 to our fit and then taking an image of it using Windows Deployment tools or Ghost. The OEM license key comes on each machine we buy and of course we plan to image all 400.

On Mon, 27 Sep 2010 16:02:44 +0000, LimonPani wrote: > > > We have a plan to purchase 400 or so desktops that come with Windows OEM licensing. As much as we would like to avoid entering each license into Windows. Is that the only option we have if we have no intentions on purchasing licensing to go Enterprise through the EA or Software assurance. The main factor for this is cost associated, what do you all generally do? Normally when you buy an OEM computer with Windows pre-installed, it is already activated, and there is nothing you need to do. -- Ken Blake Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP

On Mon, 27 Sep 2010 16:02:44 +0000, LimonPani wrote: > > > We have a plan to purchase 400 or so desktops that come with Windows OEM licensing. As much as we would like to avoid entering each license into Windows. Is that the only option we have if we have no intentions on purchasing licensing to go Enterprise through the EA or Software assurance. The main factor for this is cost associated, what do you all generally do? Normally when you buy an OEM computer with Windows pre-installed, it is already activated, and there is nothing you need to do. -- Ken Blake Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP Understood, however our intentions are if we purchase lets say 400 desktops, each come with an OEM license, we do not have any volume licensing for iwndows 7 pro. So if I built an image without customizations, took the image and deployed it to each machine and simply changed the key to match each key on each desktop and activated would this be a scenario we can follow through with or would we have to have a volume license purchased for our deployment.

If all the machines are the same model from the same OEM then you probably won't even have to change the key, just make sure each SID is different (and I'm not even sure that's necessary). The way a factory OEM installation works is that all the machines were created from the same image anyway and use the OEM's volume key, which is different than the sticker. For instance, say I just bought 3 Lenovo ThinkStation E20s with Windows 7 Pro x64 pre-installed (which I actually did a few weeks ago). Each machine has a license sticker on it, each with a different key. However, checking the install codes on the machines will show me that all 3 were installed with the same code, and that code doesn't match any of the codes on the stickers. In fact, every Thinkstation E20 with Windows 7 Pro x64 installed at the factory will have exactly the same activation code. So what's the purpose of the sticker codes? To verify that a valid license for the software exists for that machine, and in case you need to reinstall from any media except the recovery discs supplied by the OEM - which will also use the factory's code.