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Friday 13 October 2006

Bill Goes In Dry [Spiny]

According to the EULA for retail Windows Vista, you will only be able to transfer the licence to another machine once.
Yes you read right, once, for a retail copy, not OEM.
This royally shafts those who choose to build their own machines. Upgrading the motherboard & a few other things meant that re-activation under XP was a pain, but at least it could be done.
Feel free to leave your vitriol here. You may have to register for technet (link in top right of that page) but it only takes a few seconds & there is even no email confirmation of the email address you supply.
The more I hear about Vista, the more I like XP.

6 comments:

  1. That's just stupid. May as well just warez it then. Once again if you actually buy the software you end up getting rogered the most.

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  2. I don't understand Microsoft at all.. Surely their number 1 goal at the moment has to be to get as many units shipped and installed as fast as possible to increase their user base..?
    Why don't they just give away a very basic installation of Vista for free and then make their money from selling the addons.. (IE7, Office, Outlook hell.. even some of the advanced graphical enhancements)..
    Why do they make their users jump through so many hoops just to use their fecking OS?
    Is this a last ditch attempt to squeeze some cash out of the public using their flagship product prior to drasticaly changing their business model? Or do they really think that this is a sustainable model for OS's over the next decade?

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  3. Looks like it's not as draconian after all, Paul Thurrot has the details.

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  4. Still looks pretty draconian to me, despite Super Happy Smiling Paul's Super Fun Sites assurances. Basically, people like the EED possee are shafted because, according to Bill, only perverts open up their machines (less than 5% of computer users). And they have a super wizzy algorithm that will decide how drastic the changes you've made are.
    Can you reinstall onto the same machine at will? I know some people like to do a clean re-install once a year on their machine to clean off the cobwebs of installs/uninstalls.

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  5. I'm not sure re: the reinstall onto the same machine. I have to say at this point though, that I installed a new hard drive and did a clean install of XP Pro and activation failed. I had to call up some MS call centre in India to sort it out. In fairness, they were very understanding/accommodating and the whole process took about 5 minutes, but to be quite frank I shouldn't have had to faff about with it in the first place. Wankers.

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  6. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061102-8140.html
    They backed down. High five for the power of the internets!

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