As Microsoft promised in late August, the company is now offering Additional Licenses for Windows XP, although at only a slight discount off the retail price. Shortly before releasing XP to manufacturing, Microsoft decided to offer families a way to purchase additional copies of XP through a new licensing program, originally called Additional Family Licenses. The license lets consumers use their existing XP retail CD-ROMs to install XP on a second machine by providing a new Product Key.
"Additional licenses for Windows XP are now available at shop.microsoft.com," said Kristian Gyorkos, product manager for Windows XP. "As of [Wednesday], additional licenses [were] available through the retail channel as well."
The additional licenses don't offer much of an advantage over the full price, however. XP Home Edition, for example, retails for $199.00, and an additional license for XP Home is $189.00--only a $10 discount. The XP Home upgrade version is $99.00 and an additional upgrade license is $89.10. Prices for XP Professional Edition are similar. XP Pro retails for $299.00 or $199.99 for the upgrade. But additional licenses for XP Pro knock the price down only slightly to $269.10 and $189.00, respectively.
To order additional XP licenses, visit Microsoft's shop.microsoft.com Web site:
XP Home
XP Pro