Linked by David Adams on Fri 18th Apr 2008 15:54 UTC, submitted by CIozzio
A Microsoft executive sent out a snotty email chastising anyone who has been encouraging people to purchase the Vista upgrade and install it without owning a valid Windows license. People discovered long ago that the Vista upgrade, which costs half of what full license costs, will install on new hardware without verification of a previous install. Microsoft's Eric Ligman points out, to those people who weren't aware, that this is just as much a violation of the license as "borrowing" an install disk from a friend.
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Member since:
2005-08-07
I was reading along nodding my head slightly when I came across these words and found myself suddenly wrapped around a telephone pole....
These small-time techs are nothing more than thieves if they're installing cracked copies of Windows on a customer PC.
These thieves are picking their own pockets, because their customers will stop supporting them when the next update rolls around and the updated WGA *.DLLs rat them out and that's bad enough in itself.
But every time one of these fools poop in their own nest it makes it harder and harder for honest techs to earn a living making small repairs and doing OS installations.
In the last month alone I've had at least ten people suggest I find ways to "fix" their install without having proper install media or licenses.
The reason they think this is okay is because of foolish thieves like the ones you mention!
Maybe if these so called small-time techs would stop enabling these people and tell them what the real cost of Windows ownership, there'd be some changes. Maybe there would be more people using alternative OSes. Maybe BeOS would still be around...
I hope anyone thinking they can get away with selling customers infringing copies of Windows gets caught and the book thrown at them, because they're the ones who've helped get us in this fix we're all in today!
--bornagainpenguin