PreMagination » vista http://www.premagination.com A living document of Drew Loika's... Life, Passions, and Follies Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:29:00 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 Vista Activation is Broken http://www.premagination.com/2007/11/01/vista-activation-is-broken/ http://www.premagination.com/2007/11/01/vista-activation-is-broken/#comments Fri, 02 Nov 2007 06:10:48 +0000 Drew Loika http://www.premagination.com/2007/11/01/vista-activation-is-broken/ So, I just had the “privilege” of spending 10 minutes on the phone with an India call center because Vista needed reactivation. And this is actually the second time I’ve had to do this! Keep in mind that my copy of Vista Business is 100% legitimate and has only (ever) been installed on my one and only laptop. The first reactivation was required when I upgraded hard drives, this time it was demanded when I pulled out one of my sticks of ram. (It was bad. Do I have to do this AGAIN when the new ram arrives!?!) It is more than a little disconcerting to have most of my life (my laptop contains a ton of material for work, school, and social activities) subject to the whims of some call center operator. How many “reactivations” do I get until they say no? My “friend” has a fully working cracked copy of Vista that validates just fine, downloads updates, etc. What possible incentive do I have for obtaining a legitimate copy when the free version of Vista has a far better user experience? I think “paying customer” is just a euphemism for “punished customer”.

SIGH. While I’m still a fan of Vista, I also wouldn’t blame people for using the TimerLock crack to skip all the activation garbage. Microsoft CAN do really good things, so how do they screw some stuff up so badly?

]]> http://www.premagination.com/2007/11/01/vista-activation-is-broken/feed/ 0