BartPE usage rights

I believe that any bootable media usage (ISOLINUX, Acronis loader, BartPE, or WinPE) is licensed for one computer. At least that it the way I interpret it. Good question, however, and we shall wait to see the official Acronis reply.

It seems that otherwise, you could use the bootable media to maintain backups on any number of systems (friends, family, etc.), since the bootable media is independent of the system itself. Somehow that does not seem fair to Acronis, or any software vendor for that matter.

Here is a clip from license.rtf:
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Assigning the License. Before you run any instance of the Software under a Software License, you must assign that license to one of your Computer and that Computer is the licensed Computer for that particular Software License. You may assign other Software Licenses to the same Computer, but you may not assign the same Computer License to more than one Computer except as identified herein.
You may reassign a Software License if you retire the licensed PC due to permanent PC failure. If you reassign a Software License, the PC to which you reassign the license becomes the new licensed PC for that particular Software License.
Running Instances of the Software. You have the rights to run the Software on one (1) Computer (either physical or virtual). Every Computer you would create a backup from or restore a backup to must have a valid license.

----> Seems pretty clear to me.

Yes, thats how I see it too though in that case, i don't really see why there is a BartPE plugin available from Acronis.
BartPE is used by many computer service companies as it can have loads of tech support/disaster recovery etc plug-ins.
I know the intended usage is probably for people with their own systems and any license can be abused, but why not just have the linux boot cd?

What we really need is a Technicians License like StorageCraft's ShadowProtect. Expensive but hugely reliable and popular amonst IT Service companies. It can be used while the PC is running so no need to reboot to the CD.

Dave-

Some of the issues regarding the differences between the different bootable media are discussed here: http://forum.acronis.com/forum/6893

The main idea (from my perspective) is as follows: if one is in a "total recovery" situation, i.e., your can't access the disk at all or need to do various partitioning tasks using only your bootable disk, having a BartPE or WinPE disk allows you access to Windows tools (chkdsk, diskpart, etc.). Using ISOLINUX or Acronis loader, you are limited to Linux tools at a Linux command prompt. If you are familiar/comfortable with Linux and its command line tools, then a Linux-based disk should be fine. However, I am not, and I suspect a great number of other users of Windows systems are not, with Linux command line tools, so Windows tools are more useful.

Acronis makes the BartPE plugin available to increase the user's options. Any Linux boot cd can be used on any computer system, as can any BartPE or WinPE boot cd.

Thanks Gary,

That makes good sense.

Still think a Technician version would be great!

Dave

BartPE is a work-alike based on the MS WinPE or Windows Preparation Environment which is intended for corporate customers to set up their Windows installations to automatically install their tailored versions of Windows. It was restricted to corporate customers but now it is more open. A fellow named Bart in Europe developed BartPE which isn't WinPE but works just like it in most cases and people developed plugins for various products that made it even more useful.

The main reason Acronis has a TI plugin is to get around issues with poor Linux drivers or even a non-support of some hardware by Linux. Since BartPE is an Windows type environment it uses Windows drivers and thus supports the hardware diversity that Windows supports and unlike the TI Linux offering allows you to install any special drivers that BartPE doesn't pick up from its standard configuration. The reason the user has to create a BartPE environment rather than having the CD provided by Acronis is to ensure that it is being created on the users own computer with licensed Windows. There was an argument years ago between MS and BartPE concerning licensing but this has gone away.

Any PC that uses TI, whether or not it is the installed version, the TI rescue CD Linux version, or the TI plugin in BartPE is to have its own license. I think Acronis does provide blanket licenses for computer shops but you'd have to check with sales to be certain.