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Windows Certificate of Authenticity (COA) Stickers

Introduction

Microsoft provides Certificate of Authority (COA) stickers to be glued to certified products. Microsoft uses different colors for their COA licenses as an anti-piracy practice. It means that the stickers may change and such changes may happen in uncertain intervals of time. There is usually no impact on RoHS, content, or size of the label.

See the below picture as an example:

Microsoft COA Sticker Update

COA Updates

Microsoft utilizes a variety of ANTI-PIRACY (AP) features in COAs and needs to change those features from time to time to improve the feature strength of the AP technologies deployed in COAs.

The artwork design and AP features will be changing. For example, the new Gemstone Thumbnail COA (Jade) will be printed on a polymer substrate (PET) rather than paper. The weight of the adhesive will reduce to ensure optimum performance with the polymer substrate. There will be no changes to the COA dimensions for the new Thumbnail 'Jade' COA. For all details, please visit the secured Microsoft Partner Portal (Device Partner Center – DPC).

Customer Impact

Low. We don't expect our customers to be affected by this change.

Timeline

Uncertain periods of time when the change occurs. Several months of the transition period. Distributors and OEMs may ship to exhaust the old (previous) COA. Thus, it may be implemented with Toradex products for an extended period of time.

Affected Products

  • Colibri iMX6, Colibri T30, Colibri T20, Colibri VF61, Colibri VF50
  • Apalis iMX6, Apalis T30

No changes to:

  • Thumbnail COA Dimensions
  • Data Elements and Fields
  • Adhesive
  • Durability
  • RoHS / REACH compliance


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