Microsoft encouraging the switch to Macs

[oldsk00l]

http://news.com.com/Microsoft+to+disable+product+activation+over+Net/2100-1011_3-5589504.html?tag=nefd.top

"To reduce the illegal trafficking of these OEM product keys, Microsoft will 'disable' the ability to activate these direct OEM Product Keys over the Internet," the memo stated. "When a customer or reseller tries to activate using a Product Key found on the list of 'disabled' keys, the online product activation wizard will instruct them to call Microsoft, where a customer service representative can assist them further."

The customer representative will ask several questions, such as where the person bought the Windows XP system, to find out whether the certificate is authentic, the representative said.

:eek2:

So, Microsoft wants to piss off their users and encourage everyone not run Windows???

Granted piracy sucks for MS, but hey let's punish everyone involved, gah, what bologna.

[|MaguS|]

Hows that punishing someone? All there doing is pausing the online activation done with pirate keys and making the user call them to get information where they purchased this copy if they did. If the user purchased the software or computer without knowledge that the OS was a pirate MS will probably still allow them to activate...

[CaptNKILL]

When are people going to learn? Either buy the OS legally or get copies of the unlimited license version... then you wont have to worry about activation problems :o

[oldsk00l]

Or run Linux and not have the whole thing in the first place.

[sytaylor]

Is it me or is this exactly what they promised they would NOT do when activation came out with XP?

[jnd3]

Yet another reason not to upgrade from Win2k, I guess. Along those lines, I've seen some rumors that Apple has internal builds of OSX 10.4 "Tiger" for the x86 platform. Not that they'd be taking much market share from Microsoft, but it would allow the "Mac experience" for a couple hundred bucks or less.

[ViN86]

Or run Linux and not have the whole thing in the first place.

definitely :D
im goin back to Slackware asap

[oldsk00l]

imho I really am not going to miss windows at all. I'll be running gentoo servers, an OSX box (between a mini and a G5, and a powerbook, one of those 3) and I'll prolly keep some spare crap machine around to tinker w/Linux stuff on it for. CocoaMySQLGUI is WONDERFUL. I tried it out on my powerbook and I'm obsessed, all the SQL GUI management programs for the windows platform are CRAP.

Ironically I turn to xbox now for all my gaming.

[wshadow]

there would be ALOT less piracy if they charged a reasonable price...like XP home for like 40 bucks and like 50 for pro, and office like 50/75/100