<< Would Red Hat if you bought their CD??? After all from what I've seen of Linux it's way more likely to disappoint than W2K or >>
I think we're talking about different issues here. Wanting to return a product after you use it is one thing. Wanting to return a product that you were forced to pay for and won't and haven't used is another story. Personally I build my own machines so its reall yof little concern to me, but I think those are fundamentally different things. Its like returning a pair of underwear you've worn with what you havent' worn and is still in the package.
<< What do you do for a living??? Do you feel as if you have the right to protect anything you do from being stolen??? If you feel as if anyone can steal someone else's work I sure hope you're not an engineer, song writer, or an gallery artist. >>
Actually I do a bunch of things, I'm a student, a pc tech, unix admin in training, amateur photographer, been a writer/nespaper editor, etc. I never said down with copyright laws or that its alright to steal someone elses work, I just said I don't agree with their way of doing it. To me as a consumer, its an inconvenience and I don't want that. I look at it this way. I can go out and pay $100 for my OS and take it out of the box and use it with out having to call anyone, crack it, etc. It was quite nice like now. Now I'm faced with taking it out of the box for $100 and cracking it because I don't want to have to call MS for each reinstall, hardware change, etc. Or I could just d/l a precracked copy and use that. To me it seems like it will encourage alot more piracy. I'm not saying I'll pirate it (quite frankly I dont' have any reason to use it over 2k), but I think its just more of a hassle than I feel like dealing with. They're welcome to protect their software in ways that are nonintrusive to me.
<< Do you know how easily your DL# or SS# can be obtained??? >>
Yup pretty easily, does that mean I agree with it and am willing to put it my ssn on a sign above my front door, on my business card, etc? I try to keep mine from floating all over and I don't see I need another identifying number floating all over too. I don't shred my mail like some people I know, but I'm also not going to be giving out such identifiation numbers just because some company thinks its a good idea either.
The bottom line for me is, I don't like having a unique ID number to be given out. MS might have great intentions for it, but what happens when some employee or hacker steals a database full of them? Is it going to be transmitted at other times? "cracked" to figure out what hardware I have and sold to marketing? The risk of anything bad happening is pretty marginal, but just on my own pricpals, I don't like being assigned a unique id number that is used for "tracking" if you will. Most of all though I just don't like the inconvenience of registration. So let me ask a question too, 5 years down the road when MS decides XP is no longer their best os and has release a new one that I like about as much as I like ME and I change hardware, how am I sure they'll give me a number to unlock it? "I'm sorry sir, we've upgraded and no longer offer codes for that OS, but you have a $10 credit to Win POOP." I don't like the idea of being potentially able to be forced into an upgrade. Overall, feel free to protect your product, but when that protection infringes on me, you'll loose me as a customer.