Stan Beer
Thursday, 06 December 2007 07:08
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
Like thousands of other media commentators around the world, in January this year I attended the offical Microsoft launch of Windows Vista. In my show bag of goodies, among the press releases, I found shiny new boxed copies of the Ultimate versions of Vista and Office 2007. Since I didn't have a computer at the time that could run Vista, I loaned my copy to iTWire blogger Sam Varghese for a review. What happened next is most interesting.
Like all dutiful reviewers, Sam did the right
thing when he installed this brand new boxed copy of Vista. He
registered and activated the copy. After he finished his review, he
uninstalled his copy and returned it to me.
A couple of months ago, I decided to upgrade my hardware and I bought a
very high spec box that was capable of running just about anything. I
installed Vista and Ubuntu in a dual boot configuration.
Shortly after installing Vista, I received messages about having 30
days and counting down left to activate my copy of Vista. I was
directed to an activation page on Microsoft's website and proceeded to
follow the instructions to enter the ridiculously long activation key.
When I finished and pressed the activate button, I was informed that my
activation key was invalid so I would have to call Microsoft support.
I called Microsoft support and the help desk operator on the other end
of the line told me that my activation code was invalid because my copy
of Vista had already been installed. I informed her that, yes, it had
been installed for testing purposes but it had subsequently been
uninstalled and now I was reinstalling it.
The operator then asked if I was sure that I had a genuine copy of
Vista. I told her that I was fairly certain my copy was genuine, since
I had personally received it from Microsoft at the official launch of
Vista in Australia.
On hearing this, the operator seemed surprised. "Oh, you got the copy
from Microsoft?" she asked. "And you're sure it's not installed on any
other computer?"
