Probably one of the most hated parts of Windows are its anti-piracy measures - product activation and Windows Genuine Advantage. While most people acknowledge Microsoft's right to implement these measures, many have also been bitten by the measures' shortcomings, such as server outages or false positives. Microsoft blogger Ed Bott has been monitoring WGA since its inception, and in 2006 and 2007 he didn't give a passing grade to WGA ("a big fat F"). This year, the situation has improved somewhat, earning Microsoft a passing grade - barely.
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Member since:2006-10-01
I've never had a problem with WGA either. I'm just a bit annoyed about the, "You are potentially a criminal so we are going to watch you" attitude. I find that reason enough to hate WGA.
And you say all famous software companies require it. I've never seen apple require validation for OSX. I know this because there are people who will pool money, buy one OSX upgrade disk and use that on all their computers.
Member since:2005-09-21
Apple's situation is a bit different from Microsoft's.
OS X unless patched will not run on non Apple computers, and even if you do get it going, chances are there is a lot of hardware in your PC that just wont work with it, or certain features that just don't function. The only crowd they would seriously have to worry about is the up graders, and with how much they make on their hardware, I doubt that is an issue.
If it becomes an issue they will do the same, nearly every company that produces a quality (?), closed source, for profit program will eventually try various ways to make sure people aren't "damaging their profits" by illegally obtaining their product.
I mean, you wouldn't want those board of directors to only be able to take their yacht out 3 times a year because piracy didn't give them that million dollar bonus they needed to survive would you? 
Member since:
2005-07-11
I have a copy of Windows XP Prof. I never had any problems with its wga. One of my workstations gave me a pop-up once. I found the solution in the KB it was as simple as running a command from Start->Run I don't know what's wrong with validating your copy? Adobe does that. Heck all famous Software companies require you to validate your copy. They are not open source so OS rules do not apply here.