I've been watching this thread for quite some time now and feel that I have enough free time to finally chime in and maybe spark some more issues on the original theme of this thread.
I can recall my college days were every application on my computer was pirated. (Except the OS and that's because I paid for that with the hardware.) Why? Because I needed the apps to do my work and there was no way I could afford the commercial prices of the software. Later in my college career, educational pricing for software suites came into being and I could pick up the $500 set of applications for $50US. So, my computer became less and less of a skull and crossbones machine and instead flew the flag of capitalism. Now that I'm out of school, I no longer need those apps and have uninstalled them. I also destroyed the disc copies because, if for no other reason, the apps are too old to be useful. Those apps have been replaced with, can anyone guess, the applications from my office because we are free to install the software on the computers at work and at home (contigent upon the assumption... blah blah blah). Which brings me to my points:
#1) If we have to activate our software, there will be a lot of students failing their coursework. What will M$ do without all the college programmers who learned how to program by hacking M$ products?
#2) If educational versions sell for 10 times less than commercial version while still being fully functional, why can't M$, in all its omnipotence, develop a pricing/selling plan for home users and commercial users? One simple, although not fool-proof way, would be do drastically overprice server licenses and keep individual licenses inexpensive. Not too many private users will require server licenses. The self-employed person would have only is morals to prevent purchasing the cheaper license.
#3) My office has a site license for M$ products, and only a couple discs. How many employees can take that same disc home and activate it before we can longer use it to repair/update the software at work? Does Microsoft require us to divulge our employer as well as everything else in order to bring the work software home, or are we not legally able to do that anymore? If we divulge our employer, do they count our home use as another site license user and charge the company? If so, couldn't a company just buy 50% of it's licenses and call in the other 50% as home users?
#4) M$ already requires registration of some products, otherwise they expire after a certain number of uses. I'm quite content with submitting my email address to "activate" a program, as long as I'm limitted to the number of activations and no other information is sent. Go ahead and sell my email address. It's no different than getting telemarketing calls at dinner time or junk snail mail, except I can create message filters for email.
#5) High speed internet access isn't everywhere yet. I had it and loved but, but can't get it at home anymore. I never download any updates or service packs because it takes too long on a 56k. If M$ requires an internet activation or other internet depedent service, I'm SOL as are many other potential customers.
To answer your last question, gunthnp, I will be leaving XP. When the time comes I'll move from 98SE to ME or Win2K, depending on my needs. I actually plan on doing the Win2K/Linux dual boot. Corel has been moving their MS Office equivalents to Linux to get the jump on the market. I actually prefer Quattro and WordPerfect over Excel and Word. I hear Corel's VBA equivalent is better and easier than MS VBA, and also happens to be the Linux standard. If M$ did not get market share and become the "industry standard," I would be using Corel products now, but sharing data is more important than application preferences. Bye Bye MS XP, hello Corel Linux.
- Bill
