>Let's say I've decided (on the basis of the new EULA and the costs involved), to be a good citizen and purchase MSDN (April 2003) to get VFP8 and the whole ball of wax.
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>Now, later this year I'm buying new hardware (Dell, Gateway, whomever..) and I tell the sales rep "I already own a license for WinXP Pro".

Don't forget, the MSDN OS licenses are for development and testing only. If you have a test machine multi booted to test your application on every OS (or a bunch of machines in a LAN) then you can use the MSDN licenses. For the machine you send email on or play games on you've got to have a regular commercial license. You are allowed to use one copy of Office for general business use, however, so you're covered there for your personal machine.

Don't forget, the OEM licenses that Dell offers don't cost nearly as much as an off-the-shelf full license. They may actually charge more for a "naked" machine since it has to be custom built.