Windows Validation rears its ugly head....

[TechZ]

There's also a commercial product called that Techz (which is worth checking out if you are a 'tweaker' see here ), but I appreciate it is the 'common name' for this product, I believe the 'real name' to be XP Starter Edition .

yeah, forgot the exact name, so used the generic name lite

thanks for clearing that up.

[chucko]

Over the past 10 years the price of computer hardware has dropped at least 50% and probably closer to 75%. Computer that used to cost $2000-$3000 now cost $400-$800, and is faster and better.

The OS, on the other hand, has gone the other way. MS-Windows costs more now than it did 10 years ago.

That's the difference between a free market and a MONOPOLY!

WGA or whatever MS comes up with will be easily cracked. The only thing that will end piracy is to remove the financial incentive of piracy. How to do that? Drop the price of the product. Common sense.

[shanff]

There goes that word again....MONOPOLY. While I agree that certain aspects of Microsoft's business revolved around it, and I agree that MS has participated in some dubious business practices, why is Joe User whining about it?

If you don't like the prices of Microsoft products, don't buy them. Buy a Mac, buy a generic pc (ANY pc for that matter), and put Linux on it. Use OpenOffice or any one of the other alternatives. What's so hard about people realizing that there IS an alternative?

If you don't like the fact that Microsoft is making tons of money doing what it does best, invent your own operating system that corporate America can't live without and maybe you'll be the head of a multi billion dollar company.

Don't like, don't buy it. I just bought a Mac Mini. I won't give up my Windows just yet, but I'm trying an alternative and so far I like what I see.

[chucko]

No one is whining. A quick scan of the thread show that.

It's just hard to have any sympathy for an bloated, inefficient company that sells bloated, inefficient software at 4-10 times it's real market price.

Especially considering the fact that the only way they reached the position of temporary market dominance was to do so by breaking laws and illegally supressing competition. One only has to look at their legal track record over the last few years to see that. Look at the antitrust losses, and the lawsuits settled with extremely large cash payouts to their victims.

But things are changing. MS won't be on top forever. The free market will take care of that.