I couldn't agree more!!! Yes, MS does have the right to prevent theives if at all possible, but at the same time, this Product Craptivation seems to bite the consumer who is not participating in software theft. I refuse to believe this is the only way to stop theivery.
For the time being, I'll stick with Win2k, but Linux could hold more of a future if things start to go very sour.

lol Brian

i will upgrade to XP and say f*ck activation because im gonna crack it. Or get a version without activation. And just changing your vid card won't do it, you need to change a HD or mobo and processor for XP to crap out on ya.

Why do we need to keep starting new threads on this?
Surely you can just post to the old thread and bring that back to the top?
 
This kind of post really shows how little you know about how product activation actually works.
I'll start with a little fact for you:
 
WinXP Beta2, activated.
Following hardware items changed:
ATI XPert@Play swapped for Matrox G450
128MB RAM replaced with 512MB RAM
PIII 733 CPU replaced with PIII 866 CPU
Kingston 10mb NIC replaced with 3Com 10/100 NIC.
 
All these upgrades were made at the same time and guess what?
WinXP did NOT ask me to re-activate.
 
Fact number 2.
Product activation take less than 2 minutes via the Internet.
You have x number of installations and activations before you can no longer activate over the web.
The OS can be used in a non-activated state for 30 days.
If you need to re-install your OS more than 12 times a year (If so I really should question you owning a PC, maybe a console would be better for you) then it's quite possible you'll never even have to activate the OS.
 
How about you get the FACTS rather than spouting total and utter BS.
If you 'Software libarators' read ***** users didn't steal the software in the first place, systems like this would never have been added.

I never claimed to know alot about the software activation process. Why do you think I started this thread? To bash Microsoft? No, I'm simply trying to gather opinions like yours on this new feature. I'm naturally geared toward the right wing political view so anything new that has any potential of invading privacy or making an already complicated process more complicated I tend to have a skeptical first impression on. Also, not everyone has the time to look through all the other posts and find one that corresponds to exactly what they're talking about either. Why drudge through two week old posts when you can start a new one? Only about 5-10 new posts a day are made in software anyways, if it's ticking you off to see that many then I feel sorry for ya pal. What I said about the having to do the product activation after upgrading your video card was just meant as an analogy not a plausible scenario hence the word "imagine". I know that's the statement that pissed you off mostly, but I just wanted to say that Microsoft might POSSIBLY be giving people unnecessary grief with their new activation feature. I am not a software liberator, but I'd just like to say that their are many very good free programs out there and Microsoft needs to understand that there is only so much BS people will in fact put up with before they start looking at alternative software. Hopefully for Microsoft they will understand that because if not they will not last.

There was also an article on ZDNet recently (I will post the URL once I get back to work) where XP suddenly reverted to the "non-registered" state.
 
And while it isn't such a great hardship to re-register, will this count as one of your 5 (or however many) activations/re-activations that you are allowed? All because of a bug in Microsoft's code?
 
I'm not anti-MS, and I'm not particularly pro-Linux (although I think Microsoft may be mistaken to just dismiss it out of hand) - but I think that the activation issue will annoy more people than Microsoft believe.
 
I mean (and I've paraphrased this before on other messages ) - we're technically competent people on this discussion board, who may understand that no information is sent to Microsoft, only a hash value based on hardware IDs - but what about all the non-technical people out there, that will try to upgrade from Win95 (and most likely end up with a system that is about as stable as Windows ME) or don't understand what all the activation is about? Microsoft seems to be forgetting about them, despite the fact that they are targetting a new (and very different) product at the particular, consumer-based, market...
 
 
That's all I'm going to say, and I promise I'll try not to say it again
 
 
AndyF

Probably the main reason I think it may be a hassle is because of the Microsoft patches that have came out lately. The latest SP2 patch for Office 2000 prohibits you from downloading any attachments with any file extension such as .exe, .vbs, etc. That's right, it doesn't just warn you of the danger of this type of file it totally PROHIBITS you from doing this. It treats the user like a little clueless two year old and completely prohibits you from being able to download this type of attachment. And you know it was because of the bad press Microsoft got surrounding the email viruses lately. So now Outlook 2K has gone communist because of it. I find this to be extrememly annoying since now I have to download a special program that will download my attachments for me and change the file extension. So now even with that program I can't really be sure what extension the attachment really had, but that's another story.

I find it hard to comment on the subject. I don't like the activation, I don't know why, I don't have any technical reasons, I just don't like it. It just feels wrong. It feels so wrong that I have been moving my business to Linux. At one time you could have called me a Microsoft zealot but my attitude toward them has changed. I would buy new MS stuff just because it's new but not any more. It just feels wrong and I can't put my finger on why.
I will be avoiding it like the plage.

To which opinion I heartily subscribe.

Here's the article I was talking about above.
 
All I can say is that if it is a bug, I only hope MS fix it before Oct25!!
 
Rgds
AndyF

activation over the internet is only available twice.
yes you can change every hardware except both mainboard and harddisk, and still no new key will be requested. but for re-install of win xp, NO hardware may be different to old system (except sound card).

"activation over the internet is only available twice."
 
Where did you get this information from?
Last mailshot I had quoted 6 times.

yeah i heard 5 times without having to call. WPA isnt going to be the big bad problem everyone tries to make it out to be.

Let's hope not...I'd like to say I appreciate what Microsoft has done with IE6 with the new privacy features. It's funny because I only have it set to the default of medium security and yet most sites that I go to, including this one are given a red minus or at least a yellow flag for privacy concerns.

If you install and activate XP, then make an image of your HD using Norton Ghost without adding any hardware, will you still have to re-activate?

activation for office xp final over the internet is only available twice. maybe for os as winxp it'll be more often, maybe, after beta-testing, not. ;(

if you ghost a HD after activating and then reinstall using those same components you won't have to reactivate because the HW is the same and activation code has already been entered. Of course i havent tried this because i use a cracked version of XP so i can't say it works or not but theoretically it should.