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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: David Howe who wrote (56908)	3/28/2001 4:45:55 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 74651

They are trying to slow down illegal use of their software but series pirates will find ways around it and many other uses will just get annoyed. Also some of the illegal use shouldn't be. If I wipe my HD and sell my old PC without the OS disk and buy a new one that has no operating system it is technically illegal according to the software liscence for me to install the OS on the new PC despite the fact that it would only be used by one person and would not be loaded on any more then one person at a time. Pre XP most people just ignored this but I wouldn't call them pirates or say they are doing something wrong. XP tries to prevent this, so I will avoid XP. XP also might be disabled from a hardware upgrade on the same PC. You could call MS and get a new code but I don't want to have to contact MS (by phone or internet) every time I want to upgrade my PC. At some point I might have to give in and accept this as Win98 gets really old and un supported but it will be awile (I still use Win 95 at work with no problems), and in the mean time MS will lose the revenue from me for at least one upgrade cycle probably at least two. If Linux ever gets enough support or MS gets any other serious competition then MS will lose me as a customer for ever if they keep this scheme. Software from the internet is not a MSFT idea. It's a global change in the software market that will take place over the next few years. AOL doesn't charge for the new software, and it gives you the option to upgrade or not to upgrade. I don't have a problem with that or with buying software for download over the internet. What I do have a problem with is the idea of buying software as a service with a monthly charge. I understand MS would like to move in this direction. I also have a problem with software that updates itself without the user initiating the upgrade or at least getting a choice to stop it before it happens. However as far as I know MS has no plans do do this. Tim