Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

Vista licensing - will it kill enthusiasts interest ?

<< < (2/7) > >>

Josh:
wouldnt a new pc be considered a replacement pc? Building one I mean?

JavaJones:
Nice. Microsoft really doesn't like their customers, do they? :P

Good points and ideas in your email Carol. Do share any response you get with us if you can. I think your suggested approach could be both fair and effective for both sides.

- Oshyan

NeilS:
I don't think deactivation can be protected against foul play as easily as activation, which is probably why MS aren't considering it.

Circumventing activation would almost certainly require a crack, and probably a significantly more comprehensive one than the existing XP activation patches (depending on how all this Vista self-protection stuff works).

Deactivation, on the other hand, could be circumvented via an image backup of the OS drive. In order to do a remote deactivation, the user would likely run a deactivation tool which provides them a code which MS can verify matches the machine they last activated against. If this code is valid, MS can allow them to activate the new machine. However, if the user has an image backup (from before running the deactivation tool), they can restore from this and have a working "old" machine again.

Of course, MS could combat this kind of thing by forcing the OS to phone home periodically, but that's a whole other can 'o worms they'd probably rather not get into.

I do think MS are playing a dangerous game with the enthusiast market though. Apart from the obvious risks, such as alienating the people who drive much of the PC hardware treadmill, I wonder if MS have considered how much impact enthusiasts have on other, more "average" home users? Most enthusiasts I know are responsible for setting up a lot of friends and family with PCs, and providing support to them. If the Vista license situation drives them away, what impact will this have on the general home market? Maybe MS simply doesn't believe that enthusiasts will set up their friends with Linux instead?

Carol Haynes:
Actually Adobe seem to have solved this problem. If I restore a drive image with Adobe Creative Suite CS2 installed I have to activate it again. I don't know how they do it but it means that before I restore a backup image I deactivate CS2 to ensure I don't use up my activation allowance.

Every time MS runs WGA (which is to be 'enhanced', whatever that means, and mandatory in Vista) it checks to see you have licensed copy of the software - all it needs is to generate a hardware id with the installation code and compare it to their database to check the installion is the one activated.

It strikes me the whole activation saga at MS is a complete dos breakfast. Activation was cracked before they got out of Windows XP beta, and there have been cracks ever since. The system as it stands costs them a forutne in personnel costs manning call centres around the world for people to call to reactivate. I have had to do this a number of time for various legitimate reasons but I have never been challenged by an MS employee other than to ask why reactivation is necessary (most recently I changed a network card forcing activation). What is the point of activation if MS just reactivate willy-nilly anyway ?

A robust activate/deactivate system would make the whole nonsense consistent and sane for everyone.

What is the betting there is a cracked VISTA without activation before the official release? I'd give it odds of 1000:1 on !

f0dder:
I've never been interested in Vista, and I'm going to stick with XP for as long as I can. It bothers me that DX10 will only be available for Vista - bye bye, games. Soon, anyway. I've never been a fan of the activation crap, and with Vista they're appearantly taking it to extremely unacceptable lows.

Carol: it took a while before XP was cracked, actually. The reason it was available for pirates early was because of the leaked "DevilsOwn" Volume License Key. Then followed a brute-force keygen ("XP key recoverer and discoverer" or something), took around 10 minutes to find a key, and after some freeloading period this hole was easily patched by Microsoft.

Then somebody found a weakness in MS's elliptic curve cryptography, and made the "4in1" keygen that made instantaneous and valid keys, and this wasn't defeated until the WGA crap, where Microsoft proved that they indeed do have a database of all valid VLKs.

I just hope Vista will be a big flop and might give alternative operating systems some chance of profiling themselves. But people are sheep, so they'll probably embrace that pile of manure...

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page