Replies

Looking at the data that was uploaded, appears to be information concerning the hardware of the PC. This would be stuff like chipset revisions, soundcard info, motherboard and support components.

Why would MS need this? Easy, to determine who, if any PC vendors are NOT supplying WHQL lab reports back to MS for Windows certification. MS is blamed for everything that goes wrong with your PC. But, if your motherboard uses a chip that MS has never heard of, and your internet connection is flaky ... who get's blamed? Wal-mart, Tiger Direct, or the back alley store that sold you a non-windows conformant PC, or Microsoft? Naturally, it is a software problem, and therefore it's all Microsoft's fault.

I work in this industry. You wouldn't believe how many motherboard manufacturers there are, and how many thousands of support chips are on the market (IDE, SCSI, Ethernet controllers, memory controllers, DMA controllers, Video cards, etc.). The motherboard suppliers are SUPPOSED to run WHQL tests from MS to verify that their board is compliant with Windows specifications, and if there are deviations, apply to MS for a waiver. This is voluntary.

How else can MS gather the data, to support the non-savvy PC buyer, who is looking more at buying a low cost PC; than buying a fully compliant name brand PC?

How else can MS gather the data, to support the non-savvy PC buyer, who is looking more at buying a low cost PC; than buying a fully compliant name brand PC?

By asking users to voluntarily provide information for their database.

Instead Microsoft takes data from users PCs while claiming that they don't.

How odd that NetBSD, FreeBSD and numerous Linux distributions can support many, many more hardware configurations than Microsoft does yet none of them feel the need to spy on users.

"How else can MS gather the data, to support the non-savvy PC buyer, who is looking more at buying a low cost PC; than buying a fully compliant name brand PC? "

As long as I know the data is being extracted from my PC, what type of data and I have given permission then fine. To extract any information without my consent is wrong.

"Looking at the data that was uploaded, appears to be information concerning the hardware of the PC. This would be stuff like chipset revisions, soundcard info, motherboard and support components.
"

I looked at the data as well. It is data, not on non-Microsoft software, but rather data on hardware drivers for the most part, focusing on the dates of those drivers.

Now, the user went to Microsoft to get an update to his version of Windows XP. Microsoft checked the dates for the drivers installed on the particular machine then, presumably, updated those for which there was an update.

I saw nothing there that looked at non-Microsoft software programs or much of anything else.

How does a company update your system without knowing what is currently installed on that system? A lot of ado about nothing much, it seems to me.

Now, if you try to get an update for an unlicensed copy of XP or for an unlicensed copy of Office, then I suppose Microsoft would be a bit upset and not give you the update.

But I don't see them spying on anything other than the versions and dates of Microsoft software installed on that PC.