Microsoft surrenders on WGA kill switch

Why is it that the Vole cannot figure out that if a copy of Windows on a particular computer is legal at point A in time that is also legal at point B in time?

"The Vole has defended its system saying it has resulted in a drop in piracy. Now it seems to have worked out that not even pirates can be bothered with Vista."

Ha-ha, spot on, guys! Most importantly, however, is that Microsoft forgot their roots, they became dominant partially thanks to the ability of people to pirate their stuff. But now when the new versions of software are barely different from the old ones, who can be bothered with all this WGA cr@p ?

I ran vista. It sucked, went back to XP.

I can obtain vista illegally, meaning I can get it for free. And I can circumvent the WGA nonsense. I choose not to.

Vista is such a sour lemon that I would not have it even for free. The only way micrbloat can get me to ran that piece of grabage is to pay me on a daily basis.

Sincerely,

Someone Special.

Like Charles, I have wondered how a legal installed copy of windows can suddenly become an illegal, pirated version. I would think that one check during install would be good enough. If my OS was legal last week why does MS won't to check it again this week? How f*ck up is that?

Nothing short of Microsoft starting over and coding from scratch, with decent coding & OS principles, could persuade me (and an increasingly large proportion of people) that Windows is worth returning to. 

Why bother trying to get Windows to work, when it was built broken? Dealing with WGA was almost the last straw, but then they went and released Vista. As "Someone Special" says, why bother paying money, or doing the illegal thing and getting it for free (which *still* remains quicker/easier than buying it...) when there's a perfectly legal, free, (more) reliable & (more) secure solution?

If you aren't using Linux yet, you've no doubt heard loads about it - why not make the switch to something better?

I have to be honest, Vista wasn't the ugly, saggy breasted monster that everybody said it was. The main reason I moved back to XP was because of the problems my X-Fi kept giving me. Unable to decode Dolby and DTS signals?! Pah, I think not. If my soundcard was fully functional under Vista, I probably wouldn't have gone back to XP. It wasn't so much the fact that there was no Direct Sound or whatever, it just sounds so much richer and deeper under XP too.
I was hoping SP1 for Vista would make it look more attractive, but apparently it was just not to be. Mind you, I did like that side bar thingy on my 2nd monitor. Very very useful.

I could not agree more with Someone Special. "The only way micrbloat can get me to ran that piece of grabage is to pay me on a daily basis."

If you want the fancy aero interface you might as well just pay for Windows Blinds under XP. And if you actually _want_ more resource whoring then I think you should switch os x.

And of course anyone willing to take the time and gain some knowledge should switch immediately to Linux. I recommend Gentoo because you learn a hell of a lot just by installing it (not an easy process for a beginner)

Check this:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MICROSOFT_WINDOWS_GENUINE_ADVANTAGE?SITE=CADIU&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

In addition to the main parts already mentioned on the Inq, there's something about victims of piracy being able to buy a copy of Vista at half price.

Step 1. Get pirated version for free.
Step 2. Make up story of buying pirated version you thought was legit when you get accused of being a pirate.
Step 3. Get reduced price for a legal copy of the product you stole!

Way to stop piracy, Microsoft.

Not that I would bother. Vista still sucks even at half price.

What's not mentioned in the above, but which appears to have been announced at the same time, was that Microsoft is also going to disable the two primary methods used by pirates to copy Vista (at the mo): 

"The company plans to close a loophole that let pirates mimic activation used by some computer manufacturers to install Vista. Microsoft also will clamp down on a method of extending a "grace period" time between installation and activation."

So maybe Someone Special's hypothetical pirate version may no longer be available anyhow.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2227743,00.asp

Choice:

1. Spend a couple of hours downloading a pre-cracked, pre-keyed DVD image of Vista that requires no effort on my part really
2. Go out and buy a genuine version of Windows Vista, have to go through product activation and worry about upgrading too much for the OS to be happy about and getting bugged constantly if it hasn't realised my legal copy is really genuine?

I wonder which is easier.

/CaptObvious

visit: http://www.windowsxlive.net/index.php?page_id=15

for all those xp users like me who enjoy the look but hate vista. vista transformation pack is completely free and the best vista tranformation ive ever seen.

No question about it, WGA is a pain to honest users but that's unavoidable. There are scores of people stealing MS's intellectual property and selling warehouses full of counterfeit Windows CD's. It's done by criminal companies and in some cases, entire countries. If everyone was honest, there'd be no WGA. It's the price we pay for all the dishonest people there are in the world.

And while we're discussing that price, let's take a look at Vista itself. It's main selling point is enhanced security. I know it's not reached enough market penetration to have proven itself but MS did make many improvements. Yes, it does run more slowly. Your computer will also run more slowly if you add virus protection. But would you really dare running without a virus scanner? Again, if everyone were honest, we would've gotten something more sexy and fun. But what we really needed was better security. Have you read about the recent MI5 warning? The Chinese have rootkits that are virtually undetectable and they are using them. 'Nuff said, eh?

This really spells the death knell of Vista. People aren't even willing to pirate it. They won't spend the time or bandwidth to download it, and won't drop a dime to burn it on a DVD. It's pathetic.

I honestly think that the only people using Vista are people being paid to use it, and write favorable reviews about it.

Yeah, so if M$ paid me a ton of money ($100 billion sounds about right) I'd totally use Vista. Once.

the reason it keeps on checking every other day is not because it just ceases to be legal. The reason is quite simple, if you install the same copy on a separate machine you forfit your fist install. There is nothing wrong with that i mind you, but microsoft's definition of a separate machine is the problem.

To me, this WGA checking the licence on the computer every now and then has one purpose: to make way to some sort of time limited licence! Like you buying Vista to use for a year, and then pay again to use it for another one. It´s so like the Vole!!! Then, when they decide it´s time to upgrade your windows, they just stop the licence renew for that version... Easy.


Wow why can't someone learn something from installing Vista? I have been running VIsa Ultimate 64 for over 6 months and I haven't had ONE SINGLE problem. I have even installed many apps that were supposedly XP only and guess what, they all worked fine. Yes XP is fine, I have that on other computers in the house but I prefer Vista 64. Linux is so over rated and will never be a mainsteam OS. Linux lovers get over yourselves, if you can't run Vista then you aren't much of an sysadmin.

"Microsoft has decided to kill off the unpopular WGA kill switch from Vista"

Translation: MS has still not been able to make the bloody thing work right, so they've decided to stop entirely p*ssing off their rare Vista customer base and instead, resort to the time-honored tactic of simply annoying the crap out of them.

So, now that WGA is watered-down, when will DRM be killed off as well ?
Who cares ? I'm on XP and I'll be staying there for the foreseeable future.

I would like to put my name down for when microsoft start paying you to use vista, thanks for the tip.

MS should not drop its WGA thing... 

I wish their OS would be more imune to piracy and a bit (not much) expensive... so we could get rid of them! :D

"Why is it that the Vole cannot figure out that if a copy of Windows on a particular computer is legal at point A in time that is also legal at point B in time?"

'Cause to their way of thinking that's not true.
You see, if you upgrade your computer more than they are happy with, they would claim it is a different computer and the licence no longer valid so you are a criminal and they want you to buy a new licence. How's that for a money printing scheme?

I have legal licences of Windows 98, 2000, XP and Vista.
Guess what i'm using?
LINUX.
It's better, lighter, more stable. It's kinda weird in the beggining, but after a couple of weeks, we see how better it it. It's just when wearing glasses for the first time: The first two weeks are the hardest. After that, we see the world with a whole new perspective. A better one, that is.

Even if Microbloat paid me to use Vista, I'd outright refuse.

No sum of money will ever make me want to risk my security, privacy and freedom of use of content which comes as standard guarantee to be compromised with the installation of the colossal bloat of DRM otherwise being marketed as "Windows Vista".

Not to mention the absolutely craptacular performance Vista offers versus XP. There's nothing which Vista offers which will increase user experience over XP. All it offers as the World+Dog have realized by now is more inconveniences, slower responsiveness, a less satisfying user experience, and more reasons for Apple users to bash Microbloat.

(Though Apple users should also take a closer look at Leopard before bashing Microbloat again (don't get me wrong here though, I my self am an Apple user and I can only say that Leopard has gone the direction of Vista. I'll stick to Tiger on my Powerbook thanks, in the same way I will stick to XP on my workstation)).

Just where are all the comments from Windoze users that usually come out in droves to defend their hero regarding these issues? 

Doesn't anyone have anything positive they want to say? 

My wife's Dell was bought with XP a few years ago and while overall she's been content with it and it's worked pretty well except for the typical issues where the browser won't load pages, or sometimes just can't find the connection, but she decided to try out Vi$ta. 

She ordered it from Dell. We installed it and found it not only hesitant to install, but that it did not support many vital pieces of hardware. 

And although we made the indicated selections during the install for purposes of reverting back to XP, that didn't work either. 

We had to reformat the drive and install XP from scratch. Since we aren't in the market for a new computer, we won't have Vi$ta anytime soon. 

So the wife is back to XP, and she complains about how some pages won't load, and gripes at me for not having those issues with my Linux system. 

I recently installed Fedora 8 to dual boot with her XP. She's starting to like Fedora as it loads pages so much faster, never timing out like the XP. 

Think I just need to spend some time with her to get her more familiar and comfortable with Fedora. Thank you for reading my rant.

I've only used VISTA for a few months and have had to re-install three times. The last one was becasue it told me that my copy was NOT Genuine. This really is driving me insane. I suggest that people avoid VISTA. I think I may try OSX as it was cheaper, and will contact the vendor of VISTA to see if they can replace this faulty product