Microsoft's latest licensing salvo on Vista means you pay more for the same experience.

As a part of Vista's new licensing procedures, Microsoft has announced that only Vista Business and Ultimate will be legally permitted to be installed in a virtual machine. Parallels is a virtual machine. This means that in order to have a legal install of Vista on Parallels, you must have either Business or Ultimate.

Of course, there is nothing stopping you from installing Vista Home or Premium in Parallels, Windows Genuine Advantage and Activation will not block Home versions of Vista from being installed in Windows. Microsoft has only stated their interpretation of the license... we won't be able to analyze the license itself until it is released.

Windows has in the past made sketchy details about licensing, opening OEMs to legal threats of being forced to refund the cost of Windows, should a user chose to install Linux on their system. And while Microsoft ex-post-facto can chose to say whatever they wish about the license... it may not be legally binding.

In short, you won't get in any trouble legally for installing Vista Home (Basic or Premium) in Parallels, but Microsoft says you shouldn't. Considering Parallels only takes advantage of the full feature set of Home Basic, it appears that while Microsoft says no, the actual answer is yes, you can.

Contributed by: Christopher Price - www.pcsintel.com