Forced upgrades for Action Pack members

The MAPS EULA apparently doesn’t grant users downgrade rights - which until the start of this year has never been an issue as I have an action pack to see what the latest Microsoft Software adds to our business and expand our knowlege and understanding of the software (especially SBS 2003 R2)

Once Vista is released Windows XP will be removed from the action pack and once your renewal date comes round it will no longer be licenced for your use. The same is true for SBS 2003 - you will have to be upgrading to 2003 R2 or you are in breach of you EULA and technically not licenced!

Susan Bradley has this blog post for the description and this blog post as an open letter to Steve Ballmer.

My oppinion is that you can’t expect a company no mater how technically focused to upgrade all of their desktops to a new and potentially incompatible with LOB Apps Opporating System within potentially a few months from its release.

With the server software I am lucky to have just gone through a migration as R2 became available however I hope this server install will last me another 3 years, and any further migration work will require months of preperation and planning. I would never do it to conform to a EULA change!

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