Vista's EULA product activation worries

The Register ^ | 22 November 2006 | Mark Rasch

[ShadowAce]

[John Lenin]

I downloaded the Beta and had nothing but troubles with Vista. I'm sticking with XP.

[darkwing104]

I guess the war against software piracy has made Microsoft the biggest pirate on the block.

[ShadowAce]

When I positively HAVE to run Windows, I run W2K. Otherwise, I run software that does not have such restrictive license terms.

[Hydroshock]

First line of the EULA: We are Microsoft, resistance is futile.

[Jeff Gordon]

The ACLU could not have said it better.

[TChris]

Congratulations, Microsoft! You're creating greater and greater incentive for computer users to learn and use Linux. And they are.

Apparently, they don't have a course on "product hassle factor" at the schools where Microsoft's execs graduated.

I will advise all of my computer customers to avoid Vista.

[AmericaUnited]

Some of these concerns are phony such as the "What if it phones home and the Internet is down...". I'm sure Microsoft will post a notice and give the user something like 14 days to re-validate someway.

[VeniVidiVici]

Wow. Reading that was almost as boring as reading the license agreement itself.

[ShadowAce]

Not every important item is interesting to read about.

[JamesP81]

Or, following the movie Happy Feet, you can decide to find software with a little penguin on it.

That's be all good and well if I didn't have a thousand dollars worth of software that won't run on Linux.

[-YYZ-]

Yeah, because Microsoft cares so very much about their customers, right?

I decide I just must have Vista on my desktop for some reason, I'll probably just wait for a hacked and cracked copy of it to become available. Yes, pirated. Just as with XP, Microsoft's anti-piracy efforts actually encourage it in some circumstances. No, that's not some sort of rationalization for piracy, I'm just stating of fact of how I and many other people viewed this issue with XP, and will with Vista (if there's any way at all around MS's schemes).

[antiRepublicrat]

The first, and more familiar, is that parties to a contract can generally agree to just about anything, as long as what they agree to doesn't violate the law and isn't "unconscionable".

There's also duress and if the contract is too one-sided. Now imagine a large organization with millions invested in a Microsoft software stack, and suddenly Microsoft makes it so you have to upgrade in order to remain compatible with something. Is acceptance of a license vs. millions of dollars spent to migrate to a non-Microsoft stack duress?

[ShadowAce]

Is acceptance of a license vs. millions of dollars spent to migrate to a non-Microsoft stack duress?

I've always wondered about that. How can a court rationally find a corporation in violation of a license when the agreement seems to obviously be under duress?

[John Lenin]

I have a 64bit CPU and installed Vista, the latest beta. No mouse drivers, my video drivers were not fully functional and had some problems running 32 bit programs. Installed Linux 64bit and had less problems. It looks exactly like XP, I will be in no rush to switch.

[Shadow Deamon]

"That's be all good and well if I didn't have a thousand dollars worth of software that won't run on Linux."

Like what? There are ways to run MS software on Linux, in fact I can run the entire XP OS in a virtual machine on Linux if I wanted to.

Besides, when something goes wrong and you can't access your Windows crap, do you think MS is going care how much money you have tied up in software?

The replacements are FREE, install linux and OOo and move on leaving MS to sit in it's own excrement. :)

[RedWing9]

From the description, this EULA is just like XP. Activation is required. So whoopy-do-what.

When are ya'all going to get up in the crook of software companies when they offer you a shareware license, that disables itself after a period of time? Exactly what the article says Vista does.

[Quix]

Sounds like Vista should be boycotted wholesale.

GRRRRRR

[ShadowAce]

I know I'll never buy it--nor will I ever recommend it to family, friends, or clients.