People are sheep, at least in the techical world. They are told that they need at least a Pentium Core Duo processor with 1 Gig of RAM, even if the person only uses Office, surfs the Net, and checks email. In fact, I do all these things, including .NET development, on my Pentium III 800MHz bought in 2000.
Well, here's the latest thing that we're being forced to swallow: Windows Genuine Advantage. It is a Grim Reaper, or sniper rifleman, constantly hovering over your nifty new install of Windows Vista. Its coming to light that WGA does fun things like only allowing you to move it ONCE to a second device, or not allowing you to install some versions on a Virtual Machine. This is not to mention that Microsoft is still grappling with all sorts of reported false positives out there: people with legitimate copies of Windows, have changed a video card, or moved to another new PC, or some other legit activity, but are locked out of their OS's. To add insult to injury, they also get a prompt basically accusing them of piracy.
Windows Genuine Advantage will hover over you like a hawk, and probably behave like a retarded bloodhound. You are going to be so unbelievably closely monitored that you will probably end up buying two or three additional $299 licenses, just to save yourself the headache of the false positive.
This really fries my bacon. Microsoft is behaving like we're all a bunch of coniving pirates, wringing our hands at the prospect of screwing over Microsoft. So if this has me all in a lather, how many more of me are there out there? At what point do people just say "screw it" en masse and give the Mac, or linux, a try?
Vista is RTM (Release to Manufacture) in November, and hits consumers in January. The technical press is already all over this WGA Gestapo topic, it remains to be seen if people get the message.
Surely somebody out there will say "to hell with all of this", and install Linux, or go out and buy a Mac. If this happens, my faith in humanity will be restored.
5 comments:
Why would I leave my Windows XP and go to Vista? What will it do faster on my P3 1Ghz PC? These are the questions M$ needs to answer. I plan on buying a new system in the spring and it won't be coming with Vista I can guarrantee that. If anything I plan on going over to Linux full tilt.
One thing to note, no matter how hard M$ tries to beat the hackers, they will never win. They haven't won a battle yet. They need piracy to stay on top of the market.
You're preaching to the choir, Linus.
My next computer?.. Probably a 5Ghz PC that runs DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 (Oh yeah, Windows Workgroup!)...
Making a kick-ass ram drive, just to play Doom2... weeeeeeeeeeeeeee!..
I've already heard of some easing off. MS will now allow third party access to the OS kernel, so Norton and Network Associates can continue to exist as virus scanners.
Probably more easing off to come. But why does this annoy me so much? I use a Mac at home. I shouldn't care, right?
By the way, Stray Lemming, good to hear from ya! :)
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