Re: OT: W2K et al

["Patricia M. Godfrey" PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx]

Brian Henderson wrote:
> I just, not fifteen minutes ago, read this on a MS site:
>
> "OEM operating system licenses live and die with each PC—they are not
> transferable."
Indeed. Well, that explains it. In a way, I'm not surprised, because for
years savvy people have been buying those licenses from liquidators:
Let's say Three Geeks and a Goat bought 500 licenses, but of the 455 PCs
they sold, 50 went to Linux users who wouldn't touch Redmond Rubbish
with a barge pole, and 25 were to people who had already bought the
shrink-wrapped version. So when Redmond brings out the latest "upgrade,"
3 Geeks sells their 120 leftover licenses to SW Bargain Bin, from whom I
buy one--at half the shrink-wrap price. Sooner or later, M$ was going to
figure out what was going on and put a stop to it. But they couldn't
really enforce it until they foisted Product Activation on us. One more
reason to think Linux.
By the bye, this rule is definitely new: a few years ago, when dealers
started neglecting to give you a Windows CD with a new PC, just putting
the CAB files on the hard drive or giving one a "Restore CD", several
irate customers were citing Gates & Co.'s own statement that a license
that came with a system was transferable if the system died.

Patricia M. Godfrey
priscamg@xxxxxxxx