Microsoft Piracy Plan Means Concerns for IT 278
coondoggie writes to mention an article on Information Week about possible unintended consequences of the Microsoft Software Protection Plan (SPP) discussed on Slashdot on Wednesday. The new initiative is intended to protect consumers from pirated software, but may cause major headaches for IT shops. From the article: "Microsoft will support SPP in current and future reporting and asset management tools such as System Center Operations Manager. 'On paper it might sound pretty good, but we have to see how it works,' says Jeff Allred, manager of network services for the Duke University Cancer Center. One of his concerns is that a reduced functionality mode kicks in three days after changing out a motherboard in a server if the software is not revalidated. 'That really jumped out at me. We change out motherboards in our servers all the time,' he says. The provision only covers a swap with a non-OEM motherboard, which Allred admits doesn't happen often."
Hey Ed's... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I do not know about others, but would those people who believe that they need to be protected from pirated software raise their hand and stand up? I think it would be like looking at an Amtrak train wreck. Maybe Microsoft could consider selling an Kernel/OS/GUI where to be protected is an optional cost? This is were Microsoft could make profit. I even have a name for it, "Windows 98si, 64 bit Edition" it runs windows 16 bit, and 32 bit software on
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HUH?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Get used to it (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you want that? Did you agree to that? Does it matter what you want?
When your consent doesn't matter in things like privacy, why do you think it would when it's only about software?
Re:HUH?? (Score:5, Insightful)
"This $FOO is for your protection." No it's not. It's for THEIR protection, and most of the time that's fine. What's wrong with "We're videotaping you because we want to deter robbers."
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Pushing is not the answer. I am the shover robot. I shove you around. I am here to protect you from the terrible secret of space.
(sorry, couldn't resist)
Seriously, please pay MS so they can save me from me. I am my own worst enemy when it comes to working in my chosen trade. This will just lead more honest people to use 3rd party cracks and cheats to work around this crippleware so they can do
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Anytime someone is doing something "for your own good", rest assured that they are doing it for their own gain.
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Owner -- Item --> thief
Pirate A -- Item -->
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Re:HUH?? (Score:4, Informative)
Then you are clearly a pirate, and as we all know pirates like to hump little cabin boys, making you a pedophile as well. Furthermore, pirates spread terror, so you are a terrorist too. Rot in secret CIA prison after being tortured to death, you enemy combatant scum, you !
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You forgot the latest from Bush: Islamo-fasict.
You don't need Vista (Score:5, Interesting)
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Though from there on... I don't really see any improvement for me. What does XP give me that 2k doesn't?
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On XP on a 32-bit box, you can allocate 3 GB for your apps, instead of 2 GB. Support for Physical Address Extensions (PAE), too.
There is support for 64-bit machines on the 64-bit edition of XP or Windows Server 2K3.
Better support for flat panel displays. (ClearType)
XP will stay fully supported for quite sometime. Win2K is likely to be EOLed soon.
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XP will stay fully supported for quite sometime. Win2K is likely to be EOLed soon.
Bingo.
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I work in IT for a Fortune 500 manufacturer. Virtually all of the machines in my server room are accessed via an LCD-based console manager. All of our new business desktops are coming with LCD flat panels (we're in the middle of a desktop refresh cycle). Plus, many users are on laptops.
Product Lifecycle Mangement (PLM) systems, which are very common in manufacturing-based businesses, are all 64-bit o
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Re:You don't need Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
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Or you could just not connect your entire Windows network to the Internet without putting adequate, Windows-independent safeguards in place...
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No, problem delayed.
I had similar problems with XP, so I stuck with Win2K. I game, so I upgrade a lot, and would blow through the 3 or so reactivations quickly.
Now, however, new games are refusing to install on 2K. So I'm going to be forced to upgrade, principles or no. Whee!
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Not exactly doing just fine. As an employee of company, (that shall rename nameless, and for which I am not a spokesman), that still relies on NT4 I can tell you this is not by any means an easy feat.
First of all, there is no way to replace failed servers with new hardware and run NT4, unless you either use virtualization (i.e., VMWare, Virtual Server) to abstract the hardware or build your own servers. No currently marketed s
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This is the correct link to the story (Score:5, Informative)
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Please tell me where you're buying your server hardware from so I can avoid them like the plague!
Where I come from, changing a motherboard in a server is a dire emergency, not something that one does on a whim.
Re:This is the correct link to the story (Score:5, Insightful)
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No thanks.
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Dude whose budget are you spending? I have several machines that are dual xeon 2.4Ghz that are around 3 years old. Those things have a shelf life of 5 years(normally; hard-drives are the only thing I usually have trouble with -- I use SuperMicro machines almost exclusively) and then with memory/processor/hard-drive upgrades I get *another* 5 years out of em (usually). $300 for a mobo vs $4500 for a new server (not
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All of ours failed within a year...ok, ok, the only IBM one
I assume a cap blew and they knew about em, the phone diag only took a few minutes and they sent a repair guy with a new MB.
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No motherboard has ever died on me, despite being on almost continuously and generally being the cheapest crap money can buy. Just where do you get yours ?-)
Fully Intentional (Score:4, Interesting)
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The way I see it, they're screwed anyway. You want to pirate your copy of Windows? Just run it in VMWare. You can clone off a thousand copies without Win
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There are also open source replacements for VMware. Granted, they're arguablly not as good or integrated as VMware, but they do their job.
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Good luck with that as EMC owns VMWare and they are no small company. Point well taken though as more and more servers are being virtualized for good reason beyond what you just mentioned. Would just be one additional bonus.
As a side note, VMware server is now free as well. Definitely surprising from EMC.
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It probably was not so much intentional, in that some Microsoft executives got together and explicitly decided that inability to swap the motherboard was a specific requirement, as it was a consequence or side effect of attempting to identify a specific computer based upon hardware. Is it possible that such a meeting occurred? Maybe. Is it probab
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These shenanigans may only target certain subsets of the WinDOS userbase or just random selected users. Still, that's a lot of potential converts for alternatives.
"Alleged" (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't underestimate the lowest rank of society, but I think a large portion of the general population would understand the issue a lot more if the mainstream press were to rephrase all those headlines by one word:
"Suspected" (Score:2)
Anyways, what's with all this bullshit of trying to tie your license to the hardware?
That isn't how licenses work anymore in the real world. You buy a license (a piece of paper) that says you can use 'foo' for 'bar' users/processors/whatever.
Since when did any broadly distributed piece of c
Motherboards (Score:5, Funny)
Uh, it sounds like you need to find a better vendor if you're changing out motherboards "all the time".
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Re:Motherboards (Score:5, Informative)
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Actually makes me wonder whether this would complicate ghosting? Many companies which I have worked at create a ghost image and then install that on all new PCs. Maybe corporate versions would work differently?
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"...designed to protect consumers.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, Microsoft designed and built that to protect us hmmhmmm.
From a megalomaniac perspective (Score:2)
Don't need research (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, the article is Slashdotted, but I don't need any expert opinion or research to tell me what it means for IT. I'm the head of an IT department, and it means that I'll be avoiding updates to any Microsoft technology with any "Piracy Prevention", and when I do need an upgrade, I'll be looking for Microsoft alternatives. I have friends who head IT departments, and I'm getting the same sentiment from them.
Not because we pirate. We're too afraid of the BSA sniffing around to do that. The problem is, these things cause problems, artificially created by Microsoft, for no reason. To stop piracy? If I pirated software, then I'd know where to find cracks for these things. Microsoft's "protection" wouldn't stop me.
But I've made a general policy in my department that we've stopped purchasing or installing software that requires "activation" or any other kind of phoning-home. I've run into too many problems where an otherwise working computer breaks itself by the developers own purposeful code because I've done a normal, legal repair job. In a large organization, an instance of the IT dept. replacing some hardware or imaging a disk shouldn't trigger a flag as "suspicious activity".
In my organization, I think we're likely to have more Macintosh purchases. Users like them, they're easy to fix, disk imaging is INCREDIBLY easy, they're reliable, and they work great with our Windows and Linux servers. And we'll see more Linux servers. If Microsoft wants my business back, they can stop trying to limit their OS to do less for me, and start working on how they can improve it to do more for me.
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Don't most OSes and applications do that to check if there are updates? It seems every time I turn onmy machine some application wants to update itself, be it Firefox, Windows, my printer driver, Acrobat Reader, etc etc. All of these things have something in common - they have to "phone home" (or at least check with some server outside my LAN) per
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Re:Don't need research (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll tolerate Firefox's checking for updates because I have no reason to believe that anything nefarious is going on, I can disable it, and in no foreseeable case will Firefox's developers purposefully sabotage Firefox in the update because they're trying to extort money from me.
That said, I still disable the automatic updates. I like having a button that says, "Check for updates". It makes it easy to update the software when I choose to do so. I hate automatic updates, however. Even assuming I trust them, they always seem to drain system/network resources at inopportune times.
And a printer driver looking for updates? I wouldn't tolerate that. If my printer is working, I don't need an update, unless it's a security issue. And if the printer is capable of causing a security issue, you need to change your OS.
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Re:Don't need research (Score:4, Interesting)
I swap hardware plenty often enough to make software that requires activation a big PITA. When I need it done, sometimes, it's fairly urgent and I don't want to have to call Microsoft to get things reactivated.
I'll grant you that Microsoft isn't the worst offender of these "activation" schemes. I have software in house that requires activation, and if you reformat the same computer, reinstall on the same exact hardware, it won't recognize that it's the same computer and activation won't work. On the other hand, with this same software, if you reimage to a different hard drive and put it in the original computer, it will recognize that the hard drive is different and shut down. This company doesn't offer instructions on what to do if you have a problem with activation. They don't offer a public tech support phone number or e-mail address. The only way I've been able to reactivate it is to call their main line, get transferred 3 times, and get put on hold for an hour and a half.
So, yeah, it could be worse. I tolerate software that requires activation so long as they offer an "enterprise" version that doesn't have any of this "piracy protection", and that's what I'm doing with Windows, Office, Photoshop, etc. right now. That means you get to pay extra and jump through additional hoops for unbroken versions of their software. It's not ideal because you don't necessarily get OEM prices or the upgradability of retail versions, and though you can buy their "assurance", it means a yearly charge for "free" upgrades. Meanwhile, Microsoft hasn't released a new version of Windows in 5 years, and the new version they're supposed to release soon, I don't want. So once any "piracy protection" shows up in an enterprise version and prevents me from doing reasonable things, I am done putting up with it.
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What is this technobabble? I don't recongise any of that from my CS course.
hurts paying customers (Score:3, Insightful)
This was effectively punishing paying customers if they did not continue to pay as often as MS wished. This is a common practice, most products go out of data in a few years, but the MS disregard for paying customers tends to be a bit more extreme. This new proposal is the ultimate indication of that. Your software, that you paid for, has a time bomb that could jeopardize your business, and there is no way to guarantee that it will not affect you.
MS would say, just give us a call and we will fix it. But if I need something ready 10 minutes from now, I need to know that I will not have to call MS because they won't treat me as a paying customer.
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"One big reason that I left MS Office ..."
F/OSS fans, take note. We should be encouraging this sort of thing as much as we can.
We should also try our hardest to eliminate software piracy. Most of you already know why, but a few need a reminder:
Ninety-something% of people who are prevented from pirating Windows or Office or whatever are not> going to purchase same. Generally, they can't. They don't have $200. They are going to find a cheap or free alternative. Piracy hurts free software more than it
Death of the custom Windows PC. (Score:2, Insightful)
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Er, opening your Xbox is against the MS terms of use and instantly voids your warranty, so they legally have every right to ban you from XBL, considering the moment you open the box you are potentially installing any sort of undetectable mod chip, or any other plethora of hardware changes that subvert MS' security and networking model.
Of course, there is documentation all over the place on how to swap in a new driv
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MS wants to be the sole authority on what can and can not play on a Windows machine. They're trying to turn it into an appliance, ala XBOX360.
Huh?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Protect the customers from pirated software?
The customers? WTF???
Zonk, can I have some of what you're smoking? Microsoft is protecting themselves from pirated software, not you or me.
Sheesh.
On a slightly related note, it appears that my XP installation is on its last legs; every Windows update makes it slower and slower. As I type this, it keeps momentarily hanging, and there's nothing running but firewall, AV, Firefox, and Winamp.
Damn I am not looking forward to reinstalling it at all. I won't be "upgrading" again; I wish my vid card would get along with Linux. Maybe I'll try Ubantu this time. Anybody know how to get ANY flavor of Linux working with an ATI with an S-video out and a really old 14 inch HP monitor?
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Reminds me of how Macrovision used to bill their vertical blinking interval tampering as "Quality Protection" as if people wouldn't know the difference between the bear shit and the buckwheat.
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Nah, this is the prototype RFM implementation which requires you to reinstall Windows once a year.
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I have a 3 yr old compaq laptop with an ATI gpu in it that ATI don't make linux drivers for at all.
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The TV out sort of works.
Can't we all just get along? (Score:5, Insightful)
Software copy protection and DRM don't work. You annoy legitimate users who have a corner case (usually enough for them to buy a competitor's product) and the h4x0rz work around it. The few pennies you save are more than made up for with bad publicity.
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Of course, I've only bought something like 2 pieces of software in the last 5 years, other than a couple games I bought as gifts for others. I started getting more and more reluctant as games required
Total headache in "secure" environments (Score:3, Interesting)
What ended up happening is that we had to walk through the XP Pro "enter each line into your touch-tone phone" thing without the phone, writing everything down, leave the area, call, write down everything the phone system told us, then come back into the area. Something messed up the first time and it ended up taking over an hour to get it done and working. We had a similar (but not quite as frustrating) experience activating Macromedia Flash.
Given how bad this experience was (and this was pre-WGA!), I can't imagine what a nightmare it would be if Vista suddenly decided it wasn't legit in that sort of environment. I have heard from my former co-workers that they've basically abandoned that machine and are using linux for all their day-to-day work. It interoperates better with the big iron anyway.
MS hardware change problems are not news.. (Score:2)
But despite all that, companies will switch to Vista in droves.
The argument: other lemmings use it..
Activation (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway,
Thanks
Thank you Microsoft (Score:2)
I'm so happy microsoft is looking out for me. I'm tired of turning on my computer and finding someone loaded a suite of Adobe programs on my computer that I haven't paid for.
poor editorializing (Score:3, Insightful)
HUH?
protect consumers from pirated software? Protect? Are unathroized copies of Windows raping and pillaging towns along the Atlantic coast?
To my knowledge there has never been any harm to, "consumers".
The measure is intended to protect Microsoft from losses from authorized copying.
Don't Panic (Score:5, Insightful)
Eh? What's that? You don't have an exit strategy? My God man, have you been paying no attention at all for the last four years? You've slept through all the warnings? You didn't think through XP Registration and where it was headed? You slept right through WGA? Maybe you should panic. Best get cracking on a plan. The rest of you slow down, take your time BUT GET THE HELL OFF THIS SHIP BECAUSE YOU DON'T WANT TO STILL BE HERE IN FIVE YEARS
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. You've obviously never worked in corporate IT. When a server is down, the last thing you're worried about is contacting the frickin' vendor to get the OS activated. Servers in the corporate datacenter aren't likely to have Internet access. So to getting it activated is going to likely require a phone call. Every minute that server is down, it's costing the company $$$ in lost productivity. And what if someone forgets to do it? Ouch.
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Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
However, consider the following:
- Server crashes due to hardware failure
- Techs follow the existing standard procedure to restore (i.e. replace motherboard)
- Service is restored on time according to SLAs.
- The server continues to happily serve out data and requests.
- Three days pass and suddenly the server is offline *AGAIN* because it wasn't activated and is now refusing requests.
- Spend more time on the phone with Microsoft than it took to replace the motherboard.
Suddenly, that hardware failure had a MUCH larger impact than it had to.
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I ASSUME that the tech will connect to the server desktop at least once (install patches, drivers, etc), so i think the activation warning would be noticed. Not performing the activation is the fault of the tech, not the OS.
If the tech is following a standard procedure (replace motherboard), that procedure needs a singe sentence update: "Check if OS is raising activation warnings.
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The scenario is that they replaced the motherboard.
No OS install required.
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Which would you rather use? A game that requires 15 to 20 seconds to validate that your cd is orginal, or a no-cd patch that opens instantly?
Which would you rather use? An operating system that shuts down if you swap out hardware, or a crack
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Re:So... (Score:4, Interesting)
Side note on the unintended consequence of this: I removed the windows software on the box and moved to a linux based solution because I couldn't activate. I am sure I am not the only one who has done so.
Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
At Ohio State, one of the most populous universities in the country, they have a deal with Microsoft that gives students access to Microsoft software on the cheap. At the same time, this deal applies to departments and other machines for the university. Since this deal is based on mass distribution, and in many cases does not include permanent media, if any media at all (basically, students take the disks, install the software, return the disks), everyone uses the same key. This is the case for XP and Server 2003. It is also the case for 2000, in fact the key is "embedded" on the Win 2k disk, so no input is required from the user.
Now, let us assume that OSU has about 50,000 students (not too far off actually). And each student has this version of Vista installed. Now, let us assume each department is using Windows (actually very few at OSU are not), that is even more copies of the software being used. I would venture that it might not be too far fetched to assume that OSU could have 100,000 or more copies of the same OS installed on various student, faculty and departmental machines. Now, the server installations are quite a bit fewer; however, I do know the department I worked for already have several (as in 8-10) servers running various Windows versions. If all these were upgraded to the server equivalent to Vista, then that would mean 10 servers with the same key, and possibly hundreds (if not thousands) across the campus.
Okay, so let us assume none of this duplication creates a false positive. Instead, let us take the example where someone has offered these versions of Windows to the internet as pirated copies. We now hit a new dilemma. There is the potential for massive piracy in this. You cannot simply cut off every version with this key, since you would be cutting off thousands of legitimate copies. You also cannot do some sort of limitation based solely on IP, since students do not live strictly in dorms and since this would enter a new realm of privacy invasion. You see, there is a huge problem with this sort of re-activation issue. You risk hurting many people. Also, for gaming enthusiast who changes components frequently, this could also lead to issues. And what if your MoBo died? Will it be a problem replacing it with another copy of the same board? You should not have to activate this product everytime your system changes. Defeating piracy is one thing, but causing a lot of headache and issues for paying customers is not. In the end, they will only hurt the paying customers, since the hackers will defeat whatever stupid system they come up with anyway.
Interesting, indeed (Score:2)
Blocking by IP address (Score:3, Insightful)
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The local grocery store has registers that run windows (this already seems like a dumb idea), the CD key is stuck to them in view of the customer. Just whip out your cell phone cam, and you ha
Story time! (Score:5, Insightful)
But between key generators and lazy co-workers who use the wrong codes on the wrong machines, I've had to call Microsoft to straighten this out a few times.
And I'm in a small company.
Microsoft's stated plan depends too much (entirely) upon the honesty/skill of my co-workers and the failure of key generators.
No fucking way, dude. Why should I waste MY time (emphasis on the fact that it is MY fucking time) because Microsoft is too lazy/stupid to figure out a better way of doing this?
Novell, way back when, used to link their licenses to specific companies and you could call them and they would tell you every license you had registered with them. If you lost a license disk, they would replace it.
Microsoft refuses to do the same. Even with the improved technology that we have today. They would rather put the burden on ME to:
a. Make sure that nothing does go wrong.
and
b. Call them when something does go wrong.
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WGA, activation, SPP, all that shit should be completely transparent to the user, they should NEVER have to deal with it or even see it. Just like the DRM stories in the last week or so, Microsoft has already lost because they have passed the buck onto the PAYING CUSTOMER.
I hope this pushes more people off using new Microsoft software.
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Say you are a home user with maybe two or three computers that you want to upgrade to Vista. Okay, you either do an Internet registration or you spend a few minutes on the phone with Microsoft activating your new O/S. No problem. Even if you have to reactivate a few times when you swap out components due to upgrades, failures, what-have-you, it's still not *that* much of a PITA.
Now, you are working desktop support for a small corporation with ~100 desktops. You are upgrading to Vista,
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Volume license doesn't get activated (ours doesn't anyways).
We just load our image, hit newsid and connect to the right domain and the machine is in buisness.
Ohh and doing something on alot of machines isn't exactly hard if you know what you are doing, even changing the serial if the volume license key somehow gets banned, MS has even made an example script to do this here [microsoft.com].
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Large companies are they're main business (as seen by who MS panders to), so they should be activating via an AES key pair on first boot in Vista server.
Vista professional should need the same, but with an administrators' license key pair; ie: you need to log in via your AD name. The AD server activates that copy of windows itself, using the key pair.
Vista home should need no activation. It's an inconvenience to the users least likely to
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So, basically, you're saying that Microsoft's software is turning into Shareware.
Crippleware, to be more accurate.
How... fitting.
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Knowing my mother... I think she'd buy a license just to see what happened to Ballmer when he tried anything with my grandmother.
I'd make popcorn and sell tickets.
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