Legal to install an OEM license of Windows 7 in VMWare Fusion?

Legal to install an OEM license of Windows 7 in VMWare Fusion? I have a desktop (HP) and a laptop (MacBook Pro). HP is currently running Vista Ultimate. (It came with Vista Premium; I formatted it and installed Vista Ultimate because I had a license for that on hand. A friend helpfully reformatted my restore partition.) MBP is running Mac OS X.VI with VMWare Fusion to Windows 7 RC.
Asked by: Guest \| Views: 332

Total answers/comments: 2

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Guest [Entry]

"Quoted from this thread Windows 7 licensing rights:

What license do you have? Retail, OEM,
and Volume Licensing are all
different.

Volume Licensing
http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/springboard/archive/2009/08/06/windows-7-enterprise-edition-understanding-software-assurance-volume-licensing.aspx:

""Virtual OS Rights - Use up to four
instances of Windows in virtual OS
environments for each license that has
active Software Assurance coverage.""
Notice that this appears under MDOP.
""MDOP is an add-on subscription
license""

You can find the retail and OEM EULAs
here:
http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/useterms/default.aspx

As far as I know, since the days of Vista, Microsoft allowed running up to 4 virtual machines, as long as they use the same operating system and serial number as in the physical machine.

EDIT

It's finally quite unclear what are the virtualization rights of a desktop Windows version, with conflicting opinions between authorities (even Microsoft). Finally, only a thorough examination of the EULA can maybe give some answer (and maybe not)."

Guest [Entry]

"It is not legal since OEM is connected to particular hardware. Except for Windows Server 2008, you cannot use OEM licence inside of virtual machines.

However, on practical side, it will work properly and you will not have any problem with Windows Update."