So...It's been suggested that come September...

[yamangman]

Originally Posted by Mike Fishcake

In theory you're quite right, however, there needs to be a customer-friendly contingency plan for when the system fails, because no system is 100% fault free (no Microdollaroft jokes please)

There have unfortunately been examples of the WGA failing on legit systems.

Really? Every case of any purported problem with wga i've seen so far has had somthing to do with the failure of the thing sitting behind the keyboard.

[yamangman]

Originally Posted by dangel

..because you can trust a large corporation to a: never make mistakes and b: have your best interests at heart? Not that convinced personally..

And i'm sure you have a legitimate copy of Windows for each of your systems

[Fidley]

Originally Posted by Caged

Let's say you wanted to be totally beyond doubt legal with your software and were starting fresh with your OS along with building yourself a new computer. So you went out at the end of 2001 and bought Windows XP Home retail edition, at a cost of £170. Vista won't be out until the end of this year / early 2007 at the most, so that's five years you've been able to use that copy for, and transfer it between computers. Or £34 a year. Or one game a year. When Vista comes along and you want to upgrade, you can do just that, buy an upgrade version. The nice flexible retail license allows you to move it between computers as often as you like, as long as it's only one machine at a time.

Just so you know, you can legally transfer oem around machines too. It's actually illegal for m$ to impose the only installed on one machine ever thingy under european law! So the cost is even less!! All my licenes are OEM and m$ know i've virtually installed one copy on a machine other than the original (not at the same time). Upgrades people! All the activation people care about (read can legally enforce) is the fact that it's not installed on more than one machine at any one time. WOOT! £60 for five years of OS!!

Only installed on one machine at any one time does, quite rightly, apply tho

PS: M$ Are damm greedy tho!!! £110 squid for a manual and the apprant upgraded right of being able to transfer from one machine to the next is ludicrous!

[chuckskull]

I bought an OEM version years back with an new mobo+cpu served me well on 3 systems, for nealry 4 years; cant complain for £80.

Theres a few way's to stop it phoning home if it really bothers you, i stopped it, but only because it was aggrivating my firewall.

Go ahead and disable all the pirated copies, it'll be worth it just to watch the frenzy online when all the script kiddies XP pro pirated editions blow up

[Mike Fishcake]

Originally Posted by yamangman

Really? Every case of any purported problem with wga i've seen so far has had somthing to do with the failure of the thing sitting behind the keyboard.

Right?

So there needs to be a decent sytem available to help these people out when it does go wrong.

As tempting as it might be, you can't say "sorry, you're not allowed to use Windows because you're not tech savvy enough to sort out any configuration issues" so there has to be a decent level of support other than "oh, you must be doing something wrong - sorry, bye!".

Let me reiterate (ooh, big word for this time of the day ) - I am for this idea in theory, as long as it's executed properly, and any problems are dealt with effectively.

[directhex]

Originally Posted by Fidley

PS: M$ Are damm greedy tho!!! £110 squid for a manual and the apprant upgraded right of being able to transfer from one machine to the next is ludicrous!

and technical support

[Skii]

just turn auto updates off !?!

[G4Z]

Well, to be quite honest, MS has built its business on the back of piracy and as much as MS bashing for the sake of it annoys me I am going to have to bash them on this one.

If it wasnt for home users using pirated versions of windows, MS would not dominate the OS market like it does today. They should be thankful that rampant piracy made Windows the defacto standard. I dont think many businesses would use Windows if it wasnt for the fact that thier users are "pre trained" on MS software.

For a long time MS has just let the home users pirate without really throwing up many barriers, of course there was windows activation a feature that didnt bother pirates and only affected legit users.

In the end, somebody will crack this, and its the legit users that will suffer, I really think MS should just let the home market lie, if they push too hard they may just find that in 10 years users are all happily using Linux and business starts to switch...

Thats why Hex is so happy about this I think, he is a bit of a linux fan.

[Howard]

STOP SAYING M$

[Jonny M]

Originally Posted by Howard

STOP SAYING M$

(It makes you look like a retard)

[Anders]

Originally Posted by G4Z

...
In the end, somebody will crack this, and its the legit users that will suffer, I really think MS should just let the home market lie, if they push too hard they may just find that in 10 years users are all happily using Linux and business starts to switch...
...

In the end ... lol. The decision is to either trust Microsoft or group of hackers. Although I know people who use cracked software firewalls.

Valid point about the home market making workers want to use Microsoft at work. Allegedly, Microsoft goes easy on piracy in markets where it’s business is still emerging to gain market penetration, then clamps down. True or not, I can see a logic to it.

[directhex]

Originally Posted by Anders

In the end ... lol. The decision is to either trust Microsoft or group of hackers. Although I know people who use cracked software firewalls.

Valid point about the home market making workers want to use Microsoft at work. Allegedly, Microsoft goes easy on piracy in markets where it’s business is still emerging to gain market penetration, then clamps down. True or not, I can see a logic to it.

look at it this way.

microsoft office: £300
sun staroffice: £30

obviously, in an emerging market, people will go for the cheaper option, right? how about adding the third option:

pirated microsoft office: £0

the reason software costs so much is because the cheaper alternatives die out - because their competition isn't the market leader, it's pirate copies of the market leader. staroffice could sell for £1, and still most people would pirate microsoft office, whether they actually need the features it has or not

[5lab]

i'd disagree on some points here. microsoft didnt base its growth on piracy. before the net was quick, it was actually pretty damn hard to get hold of illigit software.. before 98 i'd not seen a copied operating system.. it just wasnt done. more recently, sure, i'd say a bunch of operating systems are illegal, but not the majority. the number of people who build their own pcs is a miniscule segment of the market, and nearly all pre-built pcs have oem windows installed. i think that some views in here are heavily skewed by the community here.. ask the average bloke on the street, bet they wouldnt know where to get pirated software from..

[Mike Fishcake]

Originally Posted by Howard

STOP SAYING M$

I AGREE.

[Konan555]

Originally Posted by 5lab

i'd disagree on some points here. microsoft didnt base its growth on piracy. before the net was quick, it was actually pretty damn hard to get hold of illigit software.. before 98 i'd not seen a copied operating system..

Got copies of DOS 3.3 somewhere. I can't remember a time when an OS wasn't more common as a copy.

Originally Posted by 5lab

ask the average bloke on the street, bet they wouldnt know where to get pirated software from..

I'd bet they say "No, but my mate can get me it"

[G4Z]

5lab,

I used to see copies of DOS, win 3.1 and so on all the time. Have you never heard of "the sneakernet"?


Its a fair point that joe sixpack may buy a PC from PC world with an OEM install of windows on there, however back in the days of DOS and even win 95 a lot of people bought computers from a computer bloke friend or freind of a friend. My parents first computer arrived in this way, complete with ripped off DOS and win 3.1.

Fair enough its fairly anecdotal evidence, but you have to think back to the last time MS had real competition from the likes of apple and IBM. Copies of MS DOS were rife at the time.