I guess the final answer is YMMV? Unless its because I'm using Education and Kari is using Pro? On MSDN, they are two different ISO's. If I use Pro or Home they'll auto activate with the digital entitlements they already have and prove nothing.
Kari, if your keys are Retail keys they should be usable on another PC. They are used, but not used up.
I was always expecting education to act the same or very similar to Enterprise as it will often be used in a similar server based networked environment. I was surprised when I heard reliable reports of it behaving as pro and home
One difference is Education has Retail keys. Enterprise doesn't.
Running showkey on my unactivated install shows the -7CFBY Generic key my other PC got when I upgraded to the Anniversary Edition. The other PC shows activated with a digital license. This one shows as not activated with that same key.
All my ISO files are from MSDN, I have in fact two different MSDN subscriptions, a normal one and an Active Pack (MSDN minus Enterprise editions) through Microsoft Partner Network. All my keys are totally normal retail MSDN keys.
Education and Enterprise are volume licenced, only way to use them with normal retail product key is the MSDN keys. It might be that digital licensing has other terms in Education and Enterprise because of they usually needing volume licensing.
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All my tests have been done with keys never used before.
It behaves like Home and Pro when activated with an MSDN retail key, but it is just an Enterprise edition minus Cortana.
There are MAK keys and Retail keys for Education. As far as I know, if you use a Retail key, its not VL activated, same as for Pro. Pro has MAK and Retail keys. Why would they list them as Retail if they are VL? Enterprise has only MAK keys and VL keys. Only MAK keys are listed on MSDN for Enterprise.
EDIT: That was not intended to be argumentative. Just that, as far I know, my installs are not VL activated.
Yes, Education behaves in many aspects as Pro or Home, but then again it is not meant to be used and activated with normal retail keys, MSDN keys being an exception.
Totally agree. Thing is though, after the Anniversary update it shows as activated with a digital license, just like Pro does. Before then it didn't. I'm leaning towards me using Education for my tests and you using Pro may be why we are seeing different results? The activation servers are treating them differently. My honest opinion is, this wasn't supposed to happen with the Education version. I'll take the DL though, thank you very much.
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