Microsoft: Validation for Windows 7 is coming soon!

Tews said:

Where it remains to this day!!

Why not? How else am I going to get to the Start Menu?

im turning 14 in december.

18 pages man what a thread this and that and snipps and LOL and a 14 year old that kows more about seven than me. I guess that's what I get for growing up in the disco erra! Wait I didn't admit that it must be a keyboard bug on seven

Just read this thread through and would like to add something. Believe it or not Microsoft would rather you use a pirate version of their software than a free alternative such as Llinux, it allows them to keep the market share and also gives them the opportunity to bring users using pirated versions of Windows around to buying a copy, ok they will not get every person using a pirate version to buy a copy but they'll get enough.

"A senior Microsoft exec has admitted that some software piracy actually ends up benefiting the technology giant because it leads to purchases of other software packages. In this way, some software pirates who might otherwise never try Microsoft products become paying customers, according to Microsoft business group president Jeff Raikes. "If they're going to pirate somebody, we want it to be us rather than somebody else," Raikes told delegates at last week's Morgan Stanley Technology conference in San Francisco, Information Week reports.

Raikes' stance seems at odds with the Microsoft's recent aggressive anti-piracy push, via its controversial Windows Genuine Advantage Programme, which resulted in many instances where legitimate users were identified as using "dodgy" software. And that's to say nothing of the millions Microsoft spends every year on other anti-piracy initiatives.
Rather than saying that piracy isn't a problem per-se, Raikes reckons that between 20 and 25 per cent of US software is pirated, he argues pragmatically that it can have benefits over the long-run. "We understand that in the long run the fundamental asset is the installed base of people who are using our products," Raikes said. "What you hope to do over time is convert them to licensing the software," he said.
Although Microsoft has no intentions of scaling down (much less abandoning) its effort to chase software counterfeiters, Raikes argues that it's against its interests to push illegitimate users so hard that they wind up using alternative products. "You want to push towards getting legal licensing, but you don't want to push so hard that you lose the asset that's most fundamental in the business," Raikes said, adding that Microsoft is developing "pay-as-you-go" software pricing models in a bid to encourage low-income people in emerging countries to use its technology.
Raikes' intervention provides a welcome perspective on the software piracy debate which has for a long time been dominated by the simplistic argument, wheeled out ad nauseum by industry groups such as the Business Software Alliance, that a copy of pirated software is equivalent to a lost sale. "


Link

Not that I pirate software but what happens if they catch you with a illigal copy of Windows? Do they just prevent it from updates or what?

MrMephitis said:

Just read this thread through and would like to add something. Believe it or not Microsoft would rather you use a pirate version of their software than a free alternative such as Llinux

Of course, that assumes that the "only" reason that I run Linux is simply to save money. Personally for me, this is not the case. Either way though, I'm also a paying customer of Microsoft's as well...it just gets installed on a limited number of computers.