What does "Not for commercial use" mean in terms of Vista?

Why don't you just ask Microsoft to clarify that statement for you.

I mean personally I'd like to hear the answer from the horses mouth rather than second hand maybe faulty info!

How could they ever tell if you sold something on ebay? I'd use it for general computing use including the occasional sale no matter what the dude says. Running a business on it might be a different story.

What the licencing team told you is correct - You are perfectly entitled to use your copy of Vista to conduct personal transactions. Banking, buying/selling of a personal nature on the web, etc etc etc...

And quite frankly, they wouldn't care about one copy. What they *do* care about is someone abusing a contact to purchase numbers of Student/Academic licences which then get used on the computers at a full fledged business.

It implies you cant retail it. You buy it, its yours, do what you want, but you cant gain from it directly.

I am right now using my MSDN version of Windows Vista Ultimate from my own subscription. As Microsoft had put it, MSDN versions is for personal use only, so it cannot be used in a *commercial* environment.

So you see here, if I spent well 1000 plus bucks for a MSDN subscription and they won't even let me do some personal buy/sell over the Internet? What a joke it would be!

Commercial is limited to business. If you have a factory or a company, you have to purchase the business license or corporate versions, meaning that you cannot use your whatever OS that comes with a "not for commercial use" sticker.

You can find on MSDN website for more info. Believe me, these are true.

So go ahead with your license, if only you use it on your own computer.

Dude - You worry too much...

hey guys,

I'm going to bring this topic up again and I have a not-exactly-unique but may be a significant problem to some of us.

I am an entrepreneur and just started a registered company not long ago. The registered company is mainly to use for transacting with corporate clients and customers. I don't have a physical office and I am working from home generating invoices and doing websites for my customers on the internet.

The question is :

I have a registered company and the registered address is a virtual office address (not my home), but I am working everything on my personal computer at home from generating invoices to proposals to closing deals. So does that mean I am violating the "Not for commercial use" for all the software I bought? I mean, I don't purchase all these under business, I purchased them as single user and most of them written with "Not for commercial use". Will I get sued for it? Am I worrying too much?

The reason I brought it up again because I am not just making small money, I am making good 5 figures a year doing all these. Which is worrying me if I get caught for nothing or something I definitely have no idea of.

Please help.

Yes I do. I got like almost 80% off the retail price and it stated not for commercial use. I really dunnoe where is the line drawn?

how the hell that we must monitor all our actions on our PC? I mean.. I don't see any clause saying, "if you are making money consistently, then you should buy a commercial use software". and why should we as consumers succumb to all these? can't we make good money and the providers stay away not to rip our profits off? Isn't that eye sore?

Your help would be great.

thanks Scott. you are probably right. I just need someone to knock me into some sense.