arstechnica.com — The company claims that it takes every report received from WGA feedback very seriously. It has a team designated to investigate each assertion individually, and many times it will give the customer a valid copy of Windows just for detailing how he came across the unauthorized version of Windows in the first place.
Jul 21, 2006 View in Crawl 4
chubbly0Jul 21, 2006
I dont know... but didnt you waste more time writing a blog about your super exciting experience with WGA?Are you going to give me my 5 minutes back that it took me to read about you doing... well, nothing?
thepeopleJul 21, 2006
@aniruddha23Yup. Digg comments are for clear and concise points that cut to the heart of the issue without detracting from the reader's very valuable time. Also, the comment must be awesome.
mistshadow2k4Jul 21, 2006
Having seen WGA in action on a Dell purchased (from Dell) barely a year ago, still running the XP that was originally installed on it, I have to say that MS is full of crap on this one. Are they really out to get pirates or are they just trying to make yet more money by forcing a certain number of people to buy the OS more than once? Since pirates can easily circumvent WGA and MS knows this, it's has to be the latter. What I find odd are the MS apologists who come along and try to spin this when what they're doing is so glaringly obvious.
kernelpanicJul 21, 2006
I have also seen Dell's fail the WGA. This is as much of a problem for Dell as it is for MS.KP
pfranzJul 21, 2006
# A second PC was illegally activated with a single licensing key# A friend offers to repair or enhance a PC with a free upgrade, but installs the upgrade with an illegal keyOf course the way they're worded, they sound malicious and illegal (im not saying it's not illegal, just wanted to point out the wording). I think these two points sound like problems that could be improved by improving their distribution model.I help out a lot of people with their computers. Many don't have the original install disks. Even so, they're usually woefully out of date. So that would mean a reinstall and hours of updates (many updates need to be installed in a specific order). So I usually have a copy of a slip streamed copy if XP pro (which requires significant amount of time to keep up to date, reburn, and whatnot). The problem is, I have to keep track of their key, what version of windows they had (98, ME, XP pro/home) and keep up to date copies of each one.Yes, it is the user's responsibility to keep everything legit, but man it's a huge pain in the ass for me (for negligible gain), and practically unattainable for the clueless user if they would do it themselves. If computer tech support organizations had half a brain and didn't charge out the ass I would happily send them there.
redhat73Jul 22, 2006
WGA may make sense to Microsoft but not to me. I only care about my investment. When I buy something I expect it to work as advertised and that I can use it in any reasonable way I require. If I change my computer motherboard or hard drive and reinstall it should work again. WGA makes this outcome uncertain. What a big hassle if it refuses to run because Microsoft's design is flawed? Why spend your time calling them or worse, paying them for support? Why would anybody pay for this??? It reminds me of a car with WGA. If you change the engine or tires or any other major items it will refuse to run because Ford believes you may have a pirated car. You bought the damn thing. The real answer for Microsoft is quit worrying about the software and change to a hardware based operating system. Users buy a chip instead of installing operating system software in their computer. When was the last car Ford made pirated by the Chinese? Even if they tried to do it Microsoft could always offer a superior and more reliable product.
soxfannhJul 22, 2006
Uh no I purchased it from the Computer Store on Campus, what did you think I meant...
soxfannhJul 22, 2006
Sounds like you are one of the lucky ones ;)
infiniumJul 22, 2006
Same here, but from HP!?
ziadozJul 23, 2006
WGA isn't a bad thing when it works. Plenty of stores will sell illegal copies of XP just to reap some extra profit in (as we've seen with the 26 stores Microsoft is sueing). At least they are aware of the issue and giving inconvenienced customers something back.