Microsoft's shrinking license

With an eye to quelling piracy, Microsoft is making changes to its licensing terms in Windows Vista.

Under the changes, buyers of retail copies of Vista will be able to transfer their software to a new machine only once. If they want to move their software a second time, they will have to buy a new copy of the operating system.

The license changes also apply to virtualization: Customers can only transfer the copy of Windows once, including a transfer from one physical machine to a virtual machine, or from a virtual machine on one PC to a virtual machine on another PC.