[KLUG Members] M$ faces tougher battle in Europe

[Adam Williams]

>In one of the articles someone makes the point that this won't effect
>business customers of which I would expect a university to qualify as.  
>The thing that tripped me out is that if you change "to many" hardware
>components XP is deactivated (you then have to convince Microsoft that you
>aren't trying to pirate anything).

So, has anyone tried WinXP on VMware?

Other proprietary software has been doing the
weld-myself-to-the-hardware for decades,  this shouldn't really be
surprising.  If the grumbling gets loud enough they'll "disable" the
feature in a service pack.  I'm just floored by the brashness of the
whole XP/.NET/Price-Hike thing in the wake of the anti-trust trial,
these guys just never learn.

>That is a big problem for me considering how often I rip components out
>of a case.  I mean, when someone asks how many computers I have I have to
>figure out if they mean HD's with OSes loaded or CPU's (Cases maybe?)


>>For the college that I work for we are getting 140 new computers, and we
>>clone one drive and give it to the vendor to make all 140 pc the same.
>>Now with the new office and the new Windows XP that is no longer
>>possible.  Or if a machine completely dies all we do is clone it back to
>>it's original state this  is not going to be possible.  So what does M$
>>expect small IT department  to handle the new registration process?

Ever read much Douglas Adams?  There is something called an SEP field...
SEP = Somebody Else's Problem,  against humans it is as effective as a 
force/deflector shield but much more cost effective.

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