Fortunately we have some FOSS projects like <a href=http://www.reactos.org>ReatOS</a>. I hope it will be useable as an MS alternative someday

I was using a cracked copy of XP Pro (I'll admit) until a couple of months ago when I got a legit copy of XP pro. Honestly? as good as it feels to have a legit version, my pirated copy gave me fewer hassels, fewer problems and fewer headaches. This WGA stuff is a pain, something that wasn't really a problem with pirated copies (since you took measures to avoid WGA). I'm noticing that a lot of legit users are getting annoyed to, which can't be a good thing for Microsoft.

That is why I imagine that the pirated version will be "safer" than the retail. MS is gonna force alot of legitamate customers to pirated versions. Oh well. :P

Where the hell is Google OS?

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/100506-microsoft-antipiracy.h...

Just another reason not to upgrade immediately. Early adoption may be "cool" but then again it also has it's penalties. I'm fairly sure that at some point a bunch of people will get locked out of their computers - then there will be a backlash and maybe MS will do something about it, or maybe not... Allot of it will depend on "how many" and "who" gets locked out. :P

The biggest issue I've been dealing with are customers/users complaining that their system is slow. I tracked it down to the WGA/Windows Update service hogging CPU cycles trying to call home when home isn't responding or the network is sporadic/down. I also dispute their recent tagging of an Office component 'critical' when it wasn't even installed on the system.

So if the validation service has a outage people are going to be marked as using a illegal copy.

don't want to think what would happen when someone does a DDOS on that validation server...

I have an alienware laptop that fails activation the first time it's attempted using the OEM install media, and insists that I reenter the key from the bottom of the laptop every time I install it. Very annoying.

Key to microsoft's downfall may ironically be it's protection mechanisms used to fight piracy.

Imagine if all it's servers were unavailable, and nobody could use their OS?

Imagine millions of legit business and home customers faced with breach on license terms suing Microsoft?

My gut feeling is that regardless of the publicity, the ratio of legitimate users having no problems compared to legitimate users getting false positives is probably at least 10,000 to 1. Of course, when perfection is expected it's the exception that is tallied instead of the rule. I think it's sort of silly to expect software to be perfect 100% of the time. I don't think that most people expect perfection in the software they buy because if they did they would have stopped buying commercial software years ago and the software market would have been a collossal failure for everybody, certainly not just Microsoft...;)

I'm not apologizing at all for Microsoft, though. I think a false positive is a very bad thing to experience and I would not want it to happen to me. I just think that a sense of perspective is needed--odds are overwhelmingly against a legitimate user getting a false positive, and I think that has to be good enough, personally. I mean, every time most of us get on airplanes or drive on the freeway isn't that exactly the logic that we use--that "odds are" nothing untoward is going to happen to us? If we concentrated on the exception as opposed to the overwhelming rule then I doubt most of us would do much of anything as we'd be paralyzed by our doubts and phobias.

Stories like this remind me of Iraq: we're at war over there and yet oddly enough many in the news media don't seem bright enough to understand that in war you have casualties--it's as if they expect us to be able to "have a war" in which no one gives up his life. The fact that > 99% of the Iraqi people go to bed each night and awaken safely the next day, day after day, month after month, is largely ignored by the focus on the <1% of the Iraqi people who become random casualties of the conflict. I just don't think we get a whole lot out of focusing on the exceptions at the expense of the overwhelming rule--regardless of the topic. OK, I've meandered enough...;)

After years of using pirated copies of Windows I finally purchased a legit copy of MCE 2005. It installed and activated fine. Then I installed the motherboard chipset drivers (it has an integrated ATI graphics chipset) and rebooted. Windows got all pissy about hardware changing and I had to call to reactivate. Never had those problems with 'fixed' copies of Windows.

It sure would have been helpful if a link to the MS response and page explaining the corrective action users can take was provided, instead of forcing your readers to go trolling through some dipshit zdnet blog.

I have a legitimately purchased copy of XP. The software check gave me hassles when I added a freaking printer saying my copy of computer has changed.

Then I saw the "call-home" feature that Microsoft had surreptitiously installed in the WGA a while ago.

Googled around for a fix and i have not had an issue with this WGA crap since then. Oh well, this will be the last Microsoft OS I purchase, because I am done with Windows.