February Is Vista Month
To celebrate the release of Microsoft’s new operating system we’ve decided to make February Windows Vista Month. Every day we’ll run a couple of posts focused on helping you get more out of your Vista experience, which means tips, tricks, hints, software reviews and more.
To get things rolling I thought I’d point out a couple of nice Vista factoids that I’ve run across in last two days.
First off, if you were a Vista beta tester you probably got a key for Windows Vista Ultimate. It turns out, according to Windows-Now.com, that key will also qualify you for the Vista family discount. The family discount means that with the purchase of Vista Ultimate, you are entitled to two copies of Windows Vista Home Premium at the bargin price of $50 each.
That’s not a bad deal and kudo’s to Microsoft for treating their hardworking beta testers right.
The second tidbit involves something I wish every software manufacturer would embrace — the free 30-day trial. Yes you can try Vista for free for thirty days and see if you like it.
However it turns out you can extend that 30-day trial to 120, which might mean you can use Vista for free until the first service pack comes out.
According to Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror, this trick is not a hack and has the official blessing of Microsoft. To reset your Vista trial you need to be logged as a user with administrator privileges. To apply just fire up the command prompt and enter this line:
slmgr -rearm
You’ll need to restart your computer, but once you do your trial period should be reset. This trick will work three times which should give you plenty of time to decide if Microsoft Vista is worth your hard earned cash.
