Page 1 of Got a dodgy copy of Vista?

Prepare to get rather miffed, at one-hour restart intervals...

and you thought the blue screen of death was irritating..

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Curse this infernal alcohol...


Writer`s Release
My Collection

Glad I`ve stuck with (fully paid-up and legal) XP Pro.

I read the quoted article with a slight pinch of salt, suspecting that it might be a hoax. I wouldn`t put such a move past Microsoft, but I`d wonder if the backlash such a move would create would be worth it. A few days ago, the Windows Guarantee thingy servers went down and a number of users found themselves accused by their computers of having dodgy copies, even though they had kosher copies. Imagine if you had a bunch of computers doing something mission critical and this Reduced Functionality crap kicked in under similar circumstances. I`m sure you`d have a good claim for consequential loss against Microsoft. No, I think that story is possibly a hoax, but if it were true, it`s a wake-up call that maybe a single company shouldn`t have a private monopoly on something as important as the operating system used by 90%+ of the world`s computers.

I wouldn`t consider a dodgy copy of Vista anyway - or a proper copy for that matter - until I absolutely positively have to upgrade.

UPDATE: Wouldn`t denying users functionality on their computers be a contravention of Section 3 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990: "intent to cause a modification of the contents of any computer and by so doing— (a) to impair the operation of any computer;"?


J Mark Oates

This item was edited on Wednesday, 12th September 2007, 01:20

Linux is beginning to look better and better

Snaps

/cuddles his Ubuntu

For Gawd`s sake why aren`t more people looking into Linux? There are no excuses anymore, it`s a doddle to use.

Linux is beginning to look better and better

if by that you mean you just don`t wanna pay for your OS, then yeah,,,, only problem is whilst you avoid WGA shenanigan`s you unfortunately won`t be able to run most software either :) not that i`m knocking linux/ubuntu etc, cos they are great, & are made & programmed by dedicated people that often do the work for nothing.

but windows is still king for most stuff, with Mac OsX closely behind, & at £60 for an oem version (yeah, your "supposed" to buy hardware at same time ;) ) i think thats a fair price for what you get. i have an oem version of both vista & xp, & i also have "other" copies of vista on a third pc, & if it starts to fail due to the above reasons, then hey, you gotta take the knocks & bumps sometimes :)

I`m heavily in favour of the open source movement, and I have a fair bit of experience running BSD in the server environment. And I do occasionally check out the state of play with regard to Linux as a desktop OS.

Security wise, it`s very good, performance wise it is too. But for a desktop OS from the usability standpoint, it is still too far behind Windows/Mac OS. And that`s before you get to the issues of not being able to run the latest games, or the best software. It is an OS designed by geeks, and it looks it.

If I wanted to run a *nix based OS on my desktop, I`d buy a Mac.

I do like Vista though, it`s still not perfect but it is really good imho. I`m glad MS have gone away from that awful standard crayon style interface that XP ships with (the one most of us instantly turn off in favour of Win2k classic) and think Aero is actually very attractive.


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"The Green Belt policy is a Labour Policy, and we intend to Build on it"
John Prescott

Any Linux user will tell you, price has nothing to do with the matter. If Ubuntu was say, £60 for a boxed retail version, it would make no difference. It`s worth every penny. That it`s free for public use is fantastic and a tremendous bonus. I`ve certainly not suffered any compromise in the switch from Windows from a software use point of view, as many of you seem to suggest. All the crazy crap I did with Windows is just the same on Ubuntu. Not only that, but I`m safer on the internet. It`s more polished and easy to use than ever before. It`s been win-win for me.

I`m constantly amazed though, at what people will put up with when it comes to Microsoft. That people will happily spend hundreds of pounds at the launch of Vista to essentially be a guinea pig for MS, and then defend them as such is depressing. If Vista becomes a decent OS eventually, it won`t be because MS made it that way, it`ll be because you guys made it so. You deserve a payout I reckon!

Viewtiful Mark and I seem like the Linux evangalists round here!

It would be interesting to see what would happen if the big PC boys, Dell, Mesh, Evesham etc had Ubuntu as default, and Xp, Vista etc as an optional upgrade for £100 +

much like Novatech advertise their PC`s without OS, and say how much it is for each flavor of MS Windows.

If gf didn`t want Sims 2, from my recent experimentation I don`t think my home desktop would have XP on it any more.

Al

Quote:
Viewtiful Mark and I seem like the Linux evangalists round here!

Nobody loves us, we don`t care!

If you could get the option to pay an extra £100 for a copy of Windows on your PC, I dare say that many would still plump for it without knowing the other options. But even then, for that price you don`t get the disc with it, and even if you did, Vista complains if you re-install it a few times, or if you change your hardware setup. A friend of mine had the same problem and had to contact MS to sort it. What a faff about eh, having to phone up MS every time you put something new in your PC, or if you re-install because it borks.

Bugger that, I`ll stick with me Linux thanks, and I would advise anyone looking to pirate Vista to consider it too.

Linux is just too complicated for the majority of users. I had to fook about for ages trying to get my wireless card working using firmware cutters and that like. There`s no way the average user could do that sort of thing. Open source is a good thing, but there are so many variations I can`t see it toppling MS any time soon. I used Ubuntu for a while and went back to Windows. I shouldn`t have to use command line to do simple things.