A great article from Kevin Ledman - Microsoft Platforms Support, covering the following topics around Windows activation:
What is KMS?
What is MAK?
What do you consider your ‘current operating systems?
How do I know what I have available to me?
I see both keys on the volume website, so I guess I have both options. Now what?
I don’t have enough machines to use KMS, so I’ll use MAK. What do I do now?
What is required to activate MAK?
I’d like to implement a KMS design. What do I need to have?
How to I choose which KMS key I want to use?
Does Microsoft monitor all activations? ie – is activation now the same as software metering?
How does KMS know what machines to activate? How do I make sure I don’t accidently activate the wrong machines?
Read the full article here