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OP here. To answer your question about the upgrades, that was during my heavy gaming and musician phase. I changed video cards three times in those two years, and motherboards twice, just to support my gaming habit. I did make a little money back on all the old components though, so I didn't spend nearly as much money as most chronic upgraders of that era.
Not all were actually upgrades either. I did have a couple of components fail in those two years, and since I was having to buy new parts anyway, I chose to get the next better model. I was also upping my storage to make room for full .wav files of my music. You'd be surprised how many gigabytes you can eat up when recording acoustic instruments at 96KHz sample rates.
Oh, and for the record: It was XP Home Retail. As far as I know that allowed for unlimited upgrades, unlike the OEM version that is designed for one "complete" system. I didn't want to stoop to pirating XP Pro Corporate just to avoid activation, and I was done with my gaming fix, so I went Mac. I guess I should have clarified all that before but I didn't realize I'd have to defend my good word here.




Member since:
2005-12-02
"Further to your point about a mainboard counting as more than one component, the current MS licensing regards a mainboard change as a new computer, although it's possible this is for OEM copies only i'm not sure TBH."
You are correct. Changing the motherboard constitutes a new computer, and would require activation again by calling MS. The OP mentioned 10 times in 2 years, so I am guessing they upgrade a whole lot, and in fact I actually recommend more research before upgrading, as there is never a cause to upgrade that much in that period of time. Unless of course they are a hardware tester, which of course is possible.