Translation into English: "Product activation was never designed to address the real source of our percieved loss of revenue, but rather to make our regular, honest user's life a bigger pain-inna-arse that we've already made it by supplying him/her with bug-ridden, dysfunctional software, as well as to build a database of users so that once the DoJ capitulates, we actually can control the horizontal and vertical"

I think you misunderstand.

This is to get back all the "free" copies of windows.

WHen I was at a previous company, we needed to upgrade a Novell server, of course, we had to get a new license disk, and we had some problem with it. Commented the MS Shill/Manager there "Microsoft doesn't make you do piss ant piddly games like this".

So when a new server was needed, grab the NT 4 CD, and away they went. Oh, the Exchange server overloaded? Hey, take that spare box, and build box to handle part of the load.

Did anybody ever get around to sending a cheque to Redmond? Oh, nooooo.

*THIS* is what that's making up for.

They let you have the first "hit" free. *Now* its gonna cost ya. Oh, so you thought Novell was a pain? Well, now that all the Novell servers are off at your company, you *will* be paying us *before* you bring a server up. No more "Emergencies" where you might "forget".

Nope. Cash up front please.

They're *really* not after the "hard core" pirates - they're after all those (i'm sure) MILLIONS of NT boxes - with server licenses - that didn't get paid for.

Addison

That would be fine, except that the business people with NT are likely to be upgrading to Windows 2000 instead (if they're upgrading at all). They're going after the little guy at home who installs his upgrade on a couple of computers.

That too.

But that's of less interest to them than the small company with 2-3 unlicenced servers. Not no interest, just less interest. After all, most of those "other" boxes are going to be older, and if push comes to shove, they just WON'T be upgraded period. (or they'll get Linux, etc).

This is also part of the push for anybody with more than 500 employees to have to pay AGAIN for Windows, on a yearly basis, too, of course.

Addison