Apparently the author of the article hasn't actually tried to VISIT the VLSC site recently. It has been completely down for three days, leaving thousands of volume license customers without any way to activate software or access the software they need.

It's amateur week at Microsoft.

While VLSC is down for maintenance customers can turn to the Product Activation Call Centers (http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/existing-customers/activation-centers.aspx) for assistance in activating their products. Hope this helps.

I have not been able to see my licenses or download software since December 6th. That's 11 days!!! Yes, I could stay on hold forever as I tried to do LAST WEEK! But I work in a 1 man IT department with about 60 users.

I just turn out the lights and sit on the floor in a corner and repeat, "I love Microsoft, I love Microsoft, I love Microsoft." I'm waiting for Steve Jobs to walk in, hold a Mac Mini over his head and say "The power of Apple Compels you!"

Um, it's the end of the work-day December 28th and still NO VOLUME LICENCES!!! My supervisor has been on hold close to 4 hours (over the course of multiple "escalations") - The Activation Center has absolutely no time frame for how long this is going to be down.

QUOTE: "This experience will also improve administrative management and offer greater flexibility with streamlined registration and permission management"

Streamlined? What!? We spent over $200K for the privledge of waiting on hold for 4 hours over multiple days just to get to someone willing to give us one activation key (out of the dozen or so products we purchased in mass volume)....

How many rollouts worldwide is this delaying? Why is there no outrage at the way Microsoft is seemingly sweeping this under the rug? A Google search yielded 2 stories about this (and this blurb was one of them).

If I spent a hundred bucks on an old copy of Office at the local computer barn I'd be rip-siht if I got this kind of treatment trying to activate - instead we payed quarter of a milly for stuff we can't even DOWNLOAD to install!!

There is no facility to register a license. As a service contractor, my company manages many user licenses for our many clients. I was somewhat surprised when I logged in to find that I can not register a client's license and then manage it. I can not get anyone on the phone to tell me why my account is showing someone else's e-mail address...an email address different from the one I log in as. The author is correct when he asserts that the interface is an improvement on managing existing licenses, keys, and contracts. What Microsoft apparently has forgotten is that we need to register new licenses. There are no instructions for registration on the site. There are no hints about how that process works now in the license agreement letter. If I were to take a guess, the license is now tied to the corporate e-mail listing on the license itself...which now means I will have to have 150 clients create Microsoft Passport IDs and help them manage those accounts as well.

Bravo, Microsoft. You've really done it this time!

The whole thing is seriously mismanaged. I'm just buying OEM when I can right now.