There's been a lot of controversy over the MS activation scheme. I recently read an article about some tests which were conducted in a lab to determine just when product reactivation is required.
It seems that product reactivation is NOT required as long as you do not:
- change more than 6 pieces of monitored hardware
- change the NIC card
Also:
- OEM versions act the same way as corporate versions of the OS as far as activation is concerned until you do one of the things listed above in which case activation reverts to the normal method.
- MS wipes the activation slate clean every 6 months. So if you decide 6 months down the road to rebuild your system, you don't have the hassle of having to call up MS and getting them to reactivate.
To me, this seems a reasonable course of action to protect one's product and intellectual property. Shareware authors have been using product activation keys for years - it's only when a large-scale software producer (who everyone loves to hate) does it that the huddled, teeming masses of software pirates start screaming about how unfair it all really is.
This is just one man's opinion and I'm a self proclaimed Idiot. But if you feel there's anything of value in what I had to say, then perhaps you should re-examine your view of Idiots.
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