Genuine Advantage gets nasty.!

[Mighty_Jah]

I see there are a few new Genuine advantage notifications, popping up on non gen users..

OMG >>

Imagine you are running a great business presentation with some prospective clients and suddenly the computer screams - \"Stop using Pirated WIndows XP\" - You will surely miss some business.

This is no wild imagination but a real possibility - Microsoft has big plans to irritate and even embarrass users who have installed pirated Windows XP on their computers.

As part of the WGA program, Microsoft has developed a Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications software that notifies you through annonying pop-up messages if your copy of Windows is not genuine (see screenshots)

Following download and installation of the \"Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications\" tool, users of a pirated copy will see alerts at startup, login and during their use of the operating system.

[Belso]

Lmao my friend has an illegal copy, and has a huge logo on startup saying your \"Windows Is Pirated\" ect...

And that little annoying icon in the bottom right

Which is removed for him. 8)

[matt_2k34]

Easy to remove and disable...

Many people complaining and microsoft getting threats of court action as WGA is \"Spyware\" like in that each time you boot the pc its checking your pc's data with that of a microsoft server.

:shock:

Still, buy the product and you dont gotta worry.. (unless someones stole your disc, copied it millions of times posted it on the internet and put it back without you noticing)


having said that, an environmentalist group wanted to sue microsoft because the \"Recycle Bin\" did not 're-zero' the hard disk, so the space was not recycled but wasted...

(theres some SAD people in this world)

[Aaron]

[quote:ad85fd80b4=\"matt_2k34\"]having said that, an environmentalist group wanted to sue microsoft because the \"Recycle Bin\" did not 're-zero' the hard disk, so the space was not recycled but wasted...[/quote:ad85fd80b4]

I wonder how many trees would have been cut down to make the paper for all the admin work a court case takes

[dgwebster]

I liked the people that were taking them to court for breach of their civil lierties. By making it \"impossible\" for them to make a copy of the software, it broke their civil liberty to break the law should they wish to do so.

[Mike10613]

Do a search for files containing WGA and delete them. WGATRAY.EXE and it's data file won't delete because it's running. So use Task manager, processes to end the program. it helps to move these files to the desk top before you begin. After you've deleted WGAtray.exe, reboot and delete the data file. I know a large transport company that lost a computer to this problem - and their copy was genuine.

[Barley]

I get all that crap from time to time, easily removed though.

[Mike10613]

incidentally, Microsoft ask for $150 around £90 for the license a little less than Aria ask for the disk. At least with the disk you can backup your data and reformat every couple of years - which is a good idea. Reformatting does get rid of lots of aria! I checked for passwords on my computer with a special program and found some going back to the year 2000. weird, because since then I've had a new mainboard, processor, hard drive, the only thing left in from the year 2000 is the old HDD and that was reformatted and is now drive D:. I do intend one day - to compress the contents of drive C: to drive D: as a back up. I need to do something that will automatically back it up really. Any suggestions?

[David]

Microsoft have my sympathy, they are really stuck between a rock and a hard place on this one...

Obviously they have absolutely every right to ensure that their product is as hard to pirate as possible; however their detection methods are far from perfect and even result in owners of perfectly legitimate copies of Windows being accused of a copyright infringement.

On top of that, every method of detection for pirated copies seems to be bypassed within days, if not less.

[dgwebster]

here is a novel solution - free up older software for free license and make new software more affordable. what they loose in profit from original numbers of genuine copies, they will gain and maybe even surpass in higher numbers of legitimate customers

A perfect example of this is Serif. You can get free copies of older software such as webplus, photoplus etc, which gives a wee taster, but is not anywhere near the standard of the latest version.

The latest version you can normally pick up for £30

Why should I pay up to and over £100 for a piece of shoddy, half working software that does not fulfill its description?

If I bought a car and it was described has having \"brakes\" but oops, a bug in the on board computer means the breaks never/rarely work correctly, I would not accept this.

Whilst the coding for an OS in a private company is such that some error margin should be expected, however the level MS has is just phenomenal.

Vista will be interesting to see...

[Anonymous]

[Removed at the request of the author]

[dgwebster]

and ill bet that if there were a business line regulatory body, they would step in and say \"you have a monopoly\" and force them into certain acts to build up smaller competitors to such a point they could have a decent war.

I, myself, have Windows 2000 Professional and Office 2000 Professional at home, but this is only because both are actually covered by the work license. When the job goes, so does my legit copies.

However, there are more than one PC.

Without telling my mother, I actually changed her computer to having:

Firefox
Thunderburd (sorry, local joke as well)
OpenOffice.Org 2.0

And I kindly did this without her knowledge and changed the names of the links to:

Internet
Email
Word, Excel etc etc for each of the packages.

She noticed the difference between the e-mail client and word etc, but I just told her it was a newer version.

She uses them all fine.

All I need is a version of Linux that on the GUI is just as easy to use. Ive been through many many versions and modified them myself, but just never quite get the result I need.

Got to admit, Windows is SIMPLE in comparison to Linux, which still has some way to go before it will become a program your joe bloggs will think of purchasing/installing.

[Razor1984]

yer your right windows is easyer than linux, but if u think about it.. once linux reaches that lvl of user friendly interfaces and tasking MS will have a serius fight on there hands cuz i for one use linux from time to time but use XP mostly due to games and the fact im always fidling with just about all the settings for max performance lol