Microsoft Volume License Service Center is going away, what does this mean for Georgia's libraries?
Starting 6/30/2020, MVLSC will no longer be available for GPLS or Georgia's libraries.
A buyout of current licenses has allowed all current installations to remain in place; future installations will require purchasing a key.
How do we determine what licenses we currently have in place?
The best way to determine what you need is to verify the number of licenses you have installed from MVLSC. If you are unsure, there are programs such as ProduKey and PID Key Checker that will show you all installed product keys on a machine - you can then check them against the keys from MVLSC (you can find the keys by requesting access to a list of all common keys from the GPLS helpdesk). For a quick check of the OS, you can also open a command prompt and type: "slmgr /dli" then hit Enter. You will see that the OS license is either Retail, OEM, or Volume.
What about machines that need to upgrade from Windows 7 (OEM license) to 10?
In our experience, you can still upgrade to Windows 10 for free from 7. We can not guarantee this will work forever, but have tested it recently. Read more about upgrading from 7 to 10 here.
What alternatives to Office are there?
Some of the potential alternatives we have heard about for Office are: Open Office, Zoho, Google Docs, the free (basic) Microsoft Office Online, FreeOffice and LibreOffice.
What alternatives to Windows are there?
Neverware offers a Chrome OS conversion for non-chrome devices. This comes at an annual cost of $20 per machine, and a one time cost of ~$30 for a Chrome management license. Ubuntu desktop edition and Mint are both great Linux alternatives. If you just need the device to act as a kiosk/web browser, there are other options like Porteus Kiosk as well.
If we want to purchase a volume license for our facility on our own do we have to move to the Office 365 platform?
That will depend on what vendor you use and what they have available. There are still standalone keys available for purchase; see an example from TechSoup here. TechSoup also has Windows 10 upgrade licenses available here.