I've been working for my old high school for the past two weeks and finally got to install Vista (for the first time!) on one of the newer computers. I found the installation quite different from XP's, but I was quite surprised that it did not ask me for the product key during installation (is this an Enterprise thing?). It only asked for it while activating.

My school has an Enterprise license, and the IT techs that I work with have no idea how many times the volume license key that they have can be activated before Microsoft refuses to activate any more copies. Does anyone have any idea if there is a limit? The head admin has gone on vacation so I have no other place but here to ask. We don't have a KMS for activation; it is done over the Internet.

It's in the contract somewhere, and someone will know - if the school has a premier support agreement, they'll have access to a TAM and a CSM that can find that out as well.

Basically there are two licensing models for Vista. The old traditional VLK isn't much different than retail these days.

Basicaly Option one is a Key that phones home to MS ala the traditional retail mechanisms. You can use it multiple times and microsoft essentially manages the number of installs vs either your retail license or the EA/VLK agreement. IT will periodically phone home to MS to check in to revalidate its key. Most Retail keys are in this category.

Option two is to setup a Key Management Server. This "server" runs on any XP, Win2K3 or Longhorn class system (essentially a service) and takes the place of the phone home mechanism to MS. The Key management server will phone home to MS and exchange data and updated key certificates to be distributed out to Vista machines that are checking into the KMS.

The key types are mutually exclusive. you can't use a single activation key to startup a KMS and vice versa. the mechanisms are essentially designed arround sizes of deployments where the first option is for smaller environment and the KMS is for large scale corporate environs.