Repair Computer, Repurchase OS? 453
An anonymous reader asks: "Recently, I have been bit by a computer repair on an e-Machines computer that involved a system board replacement. Though this was strictly a repair, not an upgrade, neither MS or e-Machines will provide for activation of the system. Why should a user have to purchase another copy of XP after repairing a computer? The system board is listed on the e-Machines website, but costs 4x what an off-the-shelf board with the same chip-set/capabilities costs, and furthermore is not actually available. The e-Machines rep even said repurchasing XP was my only option. This seems to me patently unfair and of questionable legality. Is it possible that there are enough disgruntled consumers bit by this problem to generate a class-action lawsuit?"
Ask to talk to their manager (Score:5, Insightful)
Read your license agreement. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can't understand your license agreement, get a lawyer to help you read it.
If you don't like what it says, get a different OS vendor.
And please don't mod me down for trolling - it really is important for people to understand the licenses for the stuff they buy - otherwise groups like the RIAA can walk all over everyone. If people started taking EULAs seriously and tried to understand them, more companies would start using reasonable EULAs.
Time for a new computer (Score:3, Insightful)
Just pirate it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:increments (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Have you actually talked to Microsoft? (Score:5, Insightful)
Try to activate online
When it rejects and gives you the phone number, call it
Enter the confirmation ID
When you finally get someone from Bangladesh on the phone, they will ask if this is the first time it's been activated, and how many computers it's been installed on.
REGARDLESS of what work you've done, tell them "It's a reinstall after a virus infection.. This is the only machine it's installed on"
They'll give you a long ass number to punch in, and you're done.
Easy compared to what? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure it's easy relative to what they could put you through, but can we please be absolute when using the word "easy"? Especially when Microsoft have gone out of their way to make it more complicated than it needs to be.
Re:Solution can be found here: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:increments (Score:1, Insightful)
Sweet!
I can see why people like Microsoft so much!
Re:If you swapped the exact same chipset, then... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Easy compared to what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Meaning. . . . Get over it.
Re:Easy compared to what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems to me like someone might have a good ADA case here -- why should I not be allowed to use something legally purchased because I am forced to jump through hoops that I can't jump through because of a physical disability? To me, this is as bad as a failure to install a wheelchair ramp.
Re:Just pirate it (Score:1, Insightful)
Unethical behaviour by one party does not justify reciprocation by taking illegal measures. Or put another way, although I know it sounds cliche, two wrongs do not make a right.
And yeah... it can often be hard work to do the right thing, and we might feel hard done by when someone does wrong by us, but who ever said life was fair?
Re:Not an activation issue (Score:3, Insightful)
I wish they'd give the option of OEM install or blank system with retail box version, but nooooo, rather than your first act of ownership being spending an hour installing the OS, you end up spending an hour UN-installing all the crappy OEM bullshit, trialware and advertising.
Re:Easy compared to what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Easy compared to what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps we're basing our business model on a level of honesty that doesn't exist in human beings?
Re:Just pirate it (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Just pirate it (Score:4, Insightful)
The trend seems to favor this; every time I see a news item on Slashdot along these lines I give a small cheer. Let's hope that MS and DRM really make stealing Vista a much bigger big pain in the neck.
It's like I said (Score:5, Insightful)
But if you have a Dell, HP, IBM, Lenovo, eMachines, regardless of what MS says about activation, that machine is licensed forever. It has to be, since none of those machines offers machines to the U.S. public without Windows. And yes, I'm aware of the Dell "N" series. I don't think it makes any difference.
That's the lie of the statement that 25% of all Windows installs are illegal. How can that be when almost every computer already comes with the license.
Re:Easy compared to what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, I know Slashdotters are anti-social and hate talking to people, but can the damned excuses. Either you can use a phone, or you can use TTY. You can come up with crazy situations all day long, but it all comes down to that.
Re:Easy compared to what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, speaking absolutely, it *is* easy. Relatively speaking (in relation to how we think it should be) is when it becomes difficult.
Re:Easy compared to what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Have you actually talked to Microsoft? (Score:2, Insightful)
I smell serious BS on this one.
I have 3 machines with various flavors of XP. Each has undergone significant upgrade, update, repair in the past 5 years. At no time have I had to re-purchase the O.S.
I was able to move an install of XP from a dead desktop to a laptop and then a year later, back to a new desktop (I installed Linux, temporarily on the laptop before ditching it). All it took was a phone call each time and an explanation of why I was moving the install.
This person is, either:
Even a /. editor should have spotted this one.
Re:increments (Score:2, Insightful)
Activation does very little to stop the vast majority of piracy. A 5 second Google search will give you a key generator that bypasses it all together. I'm absolutely sure that the guy in China puts the phone down, after being denied his new Activation key, and throws away the 100,000 copies of XP he just pressed in his garage. If you really want to do Activation, at least do it like iTunes does, allow you to unactivate a computer and reactivate it on another computer; why does MS care what computer it is on as long it is only on 1 computer. Technically speaking, activation is just lame.
Let's imagine that every piece of software you've bought followed Microsoft's lead: you reinstall your motherboard, or buy a computer, and you have to call the 27 different companies and ask for permission to please use the software license you've purchased on your new equipment; please, please, I'm not bad, I swear. Perhaps there will be "Software License Lawyers" in the future that will, for a fee, make your case to all of your vendors, why you should be able to use the product you bought on the hardware you want.
It truly amazes me what people put up with. Linux, FreeBSD, and OS X all don't have Activation; something to consider.
Re:increments (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean like IBM's UNIX and Mainframes have done for the last 30 years? It would be great to upgrade a z/OS machine and make as *few* as 27 calls....
JON
Re:Easy compared to what? (Score:1, Insightful)
The fact is that diabilities make your life hard. Companies are required by law to make reasonable accomidations, but they can not make you whole again. A teletype operator is a reasonable accomidation.
Re:Easy compared to what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally I have less of a moral problem "stealing" things that are locked down, than things that are opened up. I pay for shareware and most of my entertainment. But having to jump through hoops to run Windows? That's why I recommend Unix or MacOSX. That and the fact that they're so superior.
Maybe Microsoft could spent more time properly engineering their software in the first place to make it worth buying, and less time trying to keep legitimate owners from "stealing" it?
Re:Easy compared to what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I find it funny ironic that Microsoft attained their present state of near-monopoly on the backs of the very pirates that they are now working so hard to close down.
I find it even more ironic that they choose to be much more lenient towards piracy in the developing world where they have still not managed to attain the state of vendor lock-in that is required in order for them to successfully pursue more onerous anti-piracy measures without running the risk of turning their future potential customers towards alternatives such as Linux.
Microsoft, eating their cake and having it too!
Re:Easy compared to what? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Easy compared to what? (Score:3, Insightful)
what is crazy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, I know Slashdotters are anti-social and hate talking to people, but can the damned excuses. Either you can use a phone, or you can use TTY. You can come up with crazy situations all day long, but it all comes down to that.
Activation is what's crazy, along with WGA!!! Because of these, MS has forced me to switch to Linux and Macs.
FalconRe:Easy compared to what? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Easy compared to what? (Score:1, Insightful)
2. NO one has any right to interfere with corporate entities forming of law to suit them: we *gave* corporate entities the status of person-hood, and they are fundamentally different from "real"-persons, work around the clock, have lobbyists, etc, and therefore their subsumation of all rights/influence for their own selves is inevitable.
2b. they, corporate-entities, are *obliged* to shed anything that impedes quarterly-bottom-line, by *our*+their law, so any whingeing about thinks like
"record-profits+new-layoffs" or
"non-service provided to persons"
is either nonsense or red-herring: they are "obliged" to respect the "rights" of "human-persons" only so far as current practice requires, and current practice, which changes over time to less and less be deformed by non-corporate "persons", has no obligation to anyone other than who makes it. . .
3. us disabled persons are economically-costly, and just as no corporation can be required to serve non-profitable areas/regions, no corporation, in the end, ought to be required to serve us.
In the end, the controlled, conformant, and obedient population, is more useful, because it is most-efficiently converted to the obliged profit.
*Basic* economics shows that inclusive systems are less efficient than exclusive systems, and the "excluded" always whine, so what's the problem, from their perspective?
It's inevitable, it's just economics, and it's the world we wanted and made, so why don't we just accept and be happy?