You've no doubt seen the foot-in-the-door approach played out before. It

*always* starts with a small breach into new territory and then expands. If

you think that MS isn't going in a direction of requiring personal ID

attached to (responsible for) every system running their OS, and wouldn't,

as a follow-up at some point, require periodic connections of machines

running MS OS's to MS servers - for "checkups", that may really be innocuous

at first, but establishes a needed connection into your machines and your

life that's the tip of the next iceberg. And, if you think this will satisfy

their appetite, then I've got a bridge for sale you might be interested in.

Sure, MS has an interest in protecting their software, but we have an even

bigger interest in seeing that their solution is anything but a Trojan

Horse. So far, they're ahead.

Bill

>

> >> I have 4 copies of XP - home and pro that I can't use. I had

> to reinstall

> for various reasons on the 4 >>>>computers. They refused to give me the

> keys.

>

> I've never had this happen and I've installed and reinstalled on

> many of our

> systems. First off, I can tell you if you replace a hard drive and

> reinstall the o/s a second time, it will still activate over the internet.

>

> In-fact I've done 3 activations (on same machine, after

> reinstall) over the

> internet.

>

> After that I've had to call, takes 5 min, and they've always

> provided me the

> keys. Not a problem!!

>

> They don't have name or address. Registration (providing name, address,

> etc...) is optional, during activation. So this is an activation

> issue not

> a privacy issue.

>

> I'm not defending the pricing, XP is a bit steep. But let me

> tell you from

> someone who is in the business, when the guy down the street is selling

> systems with pirate copy of Win98, it's hard for us who play by

> the rules to

> compete. They have $100 less in their systems from the start!

> Combine that

> with cheaper parts and you got a system $200 cheaper than what I can sell.

> The customer doesn't know the difference until after the sell.

> They think a

> computer is a computer.

>

> Now that the o/s has to be activated, we are getting back to a

> level playing

> field.

>

> I think most, but not all, of the opposition to the activation is from

> people who made multiple copies of the previous o/s.

>

>

> Bill Wells

> Wells Microsystems, Inc.

>

>

>