Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Mon 25th Sep 2006 05:30 UTC
Windows XP is turning five years old, but will anybody want to celebrate the occasion? Microsoft's long-anticipated replacement for 'Win 9x' - the series of releases that began with Windows 95 and ended with Windows Millennium Edition - was never supposed to stick around this long. But half a decade after it began shipping on new computers (followed a month later by its retail debut), XP lingers.
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RE[3]: Activation anyone?
by Lobotomik on Wed 27th Sep 2006 06:50
in reply to "RE[2]: Activation anyone?"
Member since:2006-01-03
I don't know about their business models, but I do know that you could get out of the OrCAD and AutoCAD activation treadmill by installing a crack (and I believe you can with XP too). It is funny how these contrived schemes end up f--king up the paying customers, while the pirates sail unbothered.
As programmable logic design packages, I don't use them any more, but I believe they have dropped from incredibly expensive to free as in beer, because what is important having customers buy their chips, not use their software. That took them long to find out, though.
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Member since:
2005-06-29
Yes, activation has always been common on software that costs over $2,000 per seat.
It's sad, but I'm not sure they could continue that business model without it. Maybe they should just find a better business model though? I can't think of one to suggest, but maybe you can.
Windows, on the other hand, is usually shipped pre-installed on the computer. You have to pay for it this way. And each lost sale is a tiny loss ($83 for XP OEM last I knew, factored against the odds this intellectual property infringer would have paid for it if they had to) when compared to how many valid users it annoys.
Anyway, as was probably predicted. Almost everyone was mad over activation, and 99% of them aren't mad anymore and have just gotten used to it.
I wonder if it'll be just that, or a frog in the boiling pot sort of thing. Will we someday have to fax Redmond all of our personal identification to login and not realize how horribly obnoxious that is?