Story: PC makers find ways to extend XP's life

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License is Valid for Both XP and VIsta

My Fujitsu laptop came with Vista preloaded, and included both Vista and XP Professional recovery DVDs. I have moved back and forth between the two, loading each from scratch, several times. As far as I can tell, as long as the recovery installation process is able to determine that I am installing on a Fujitsu laptop, it goes through the entire installation process without asking for the key.

I have had similar experience with Dell computers, although I have not specifically tried this with a dual-licensed system yet. But with XP Home and XP Professional, as long as I was installing from the original Dell recovery disks, on a Dell computer, it never asked for the key; if I installed from the same disks on a non-dell computer, I had to enter a valid key - I used the Dell XP Home recovery CD on an HP desktop once, and I had to enter the key from the label on the HP.

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