XPe License Question - For the Microsoft Question

First comment:

After many months of learning and fiddling we finally have developed a
working XPe build that can be reliably manufacutured and deplaoyed. We
have shipped ten systems thus far, and orders for future systems in
hand. We like XPe and finally would say that it is a fairly good
product in our application.

I have a question regarding the licensing of XPe, and would like an
opinion from the good folks at MS on it:

We use XPe to build an embedded machine controller app that only runs
this emebdded application thus meeting the XPe licensing requirements.

We now have a new add-on app that we developed as a COM-ADD-IN for
Microsoft Excel. The purpose of this app to to allow central control
and configuration of the machine line up that is made up of multiple
machines each running the embedded app running under XPe mentioned
above.

Question is this: Can we take an embedded computer, load it with a
valid XPe licensed install, and then load Microsoft Excel onto it to
be only as a central control computer used to control and configure
the machine line up from a central location. My concern is that we
would be loading a MS Office product onto an XPe platform, and based
on previous posts here this looks to be a violation of the EULA for
XPe. The only purpose of this app is to provide the central control,
no other work is to be done under the Office App, and no other MS
Office applications are to be loaded onto this machine. We may however
allow this central embedded controller access performance report data
with IE via an emebedded web server on each of the machine
controllers. Again it is dedicated to a LOB application - central
control of out machine line up. If this is not an acceptable
deployment of XPe we will go ahead and load the central controller
with XP Professional. However we want to avoid this - as we want to
use the excellent features of EWF to prevent tampering with the
central control computer. All Excel workbooks used to configure and
control the machines would be saved to a USB flash stick dedicated to
this purpose. The central control computer and the embedded machine
controllers are interconnected via a dedicated E-Net with no
connection to outside networks whatsoever.

Is this an acceptable deployment of the XPe product. Microsoft please
provide us with a ruling/opinion so that we can be sure and stay in
compliance with the OEM XPe EULA.

Many thanks in advance.

Michael David
Hudson Valley Control Services