In XP products, M$ is using product activation to keep track of installation of each copy. IMHO it offers no benefits to consumers. In fact
customers will be footing the bill for the resources it took to develop this complex technology and maintaining it.
In the end it’s nothing but inconvenience.
In a nutshell, a company that has a monopoly can do whatever they want, w/o regard to customer inconvenience & negative publicity.
But is there something more sinister or greedy ?
Is this a smallpart of some much larger plan that involves gaining more control over who uses software, how it is obtained, and how Microsoft is compensated. I’m referring, of course, to .NET (aka .nYet) iniative and other future plans that include subscriptions and “pay per use.”.
Also with the increasing availability of Internet connection and improving networking technology, is it possible that M$ may one day embed an
“spy/agent” in products that’ll secretly detect open, unprotected connection and send info to MS w/o users knowledge ? Since Win is closed-source what will stop them from doing that ? A firewall ? I think they certainly have the money and clout to do it.
What do you think.