[Happy2BMe]

I still say Mico$oft's piracy headaches would be far less pervasive and their fortunes would triple in a week if they brought down the price of their OS to less than $50.

[tutstar]

They also ought to lower the price for home networks. It stinks to have to fork out $100 per pc for WinXP. Take the price for additional license down to $20 per additional pc. Not a lot of homes would have more than say 5 pc's so MS could limit the amount of additional licenses per cd sold.

[ccmay]

Yes, Bill, please do this.

Please, please, please, piss people off and reduce your share of the installed base.

I hate your products, especially your crappy, unstable, insecure operating system. I do my home computing on Mac, but unfortunately I have to use your Microsoft crapware at work, and it is always crashing and freezing thanks to the countless viruses and spyware programs which you seem to be totally unable to prevent.

I wish to see your company overrun by the likes of Linux and Macintosh. I can't think of a more helpful way to turn people off Windows than to institute this kind of on-line verification.

Do it Bill! Pull the trigger, you buffoon!

-ccm

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[ColdSteelTalon]

Another reason I am going with Linux

[melbell]

"People do like free stuff."

Yeah...that's why a lot of people have "free" copies of Windows...duh genious...

[Boot Hill]

8	“Aiming to crack down on counterfeit software, Microsoft plans later this year to require customers to verify that their copy of Windows is genuine before downloading security patches”

DOH!
If they pirated the operating system, then why would MS expect them not to pirate the patches and updates, too?

--Boot Hill

[Varmint Al]

Microsoft is already checking the WPA.DBL file in Windows XP to see how many components have changed in your computer. If you change more than 3 items out of 10, then you have 3 days to re-register you software before they turn it off. Here is a screen shot of a small free ware program that tells one how many changes have been made since Windows XP was registered. Note that I added some more memory and I have 2 more changes allowed before I am doomed. I originally installed Windows XP on my D: drive and left Windows 98SE on my C: drive. When I finally decided to go all the way with Windows XP and installed it on my C: drive after a clean format I had to re register. I had to call a number and got someone from India who read, over the phone, a 40 digit number I had to type in while he was talking. The whole process took about 30 minutes.

One thing that this does is to make people reluctant in add improvements to their computer. Microsoft is in effect stifling the sales of new computer hardware improvements.

Good Hunting... from Varmint Al

[wildbill]

I tried to download something from PCWORLd this week and ran into this "voluntary" validity checker. Althought I've been accessing MS for two years, all of a sudden my computer which came with installed software is supposed to have a registration number which is not valid because the number is one that some hackers got ahold of and used.

Which way to the Linux store?

[af_vet_rr]

I posted this thought in another thread, but the way this is setup, it would be easy for Microsoft to say "okay, now in addition to blocking pirated copies, we are also going to block anybody who doesn't "subscribe" to our security updates".

[bankwalker]

Almost 300 posts and nobody has mentioned Windows 2000 Professional yet. What are its strengths and weaknesses? Can Microsoft check the validity of it? Is it stable? Is it secure? Maybe some of the better technical minds here can weigh in.

[HamiltonJay]

Agreed $200 for an operating system that is flaky and insecure to put on a piece of hardware that only costs $300 is rediculous.