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Windows XP Authentication It wouldn't be fair to start off without placing a link to Microsoft's article about Windows XP activation. In a nutshell, XP Activation is an anti-piracy technology that links your computer to the CD that installed XP. This way, if someone tries to install XP from the same CD, when XP installation goes out to the internet to activate XP, it will see that the CD that XP is being installed from already has a PC linked with it, and that the PC that it's currently being installed on isn't that same PC that's in the Microsoft database. If this happens, you can use XP for a certain period of time, but after that time (I think it was changed to 30 days), you cannot boot back into XP on that second PC without calling Microsoft and getting a 50-digit activation code. At first I thought it was a little extreme, and I still think it is. Technically, according to the EULA, you can only install Windows on one PC. I personally think that there should be a way to buy one copy of Windows per household. I get parts here and there and I'm always putting systems together. I'd like to pay for one copy of the CD and install XP on, say, up to 3 or 4 PCs in the same house. There's a whole other issue that ticks me off and that's the fact that Microsoft forces you to pay for Windows, but what happens if you want to run a non-Microsoft product? You have no way to use that PC any other way unless you run Linux. Personally, I'm going to install XP on my main machine, but my other PC at home will still be running ME. Using Windows XP RC2, the installer went out over my cable modem and activated XP with no intervention from me. It was fast and painless, but still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I'm not advocating piracy by any means, but I don't like their "all or nothing" approach to this situation. If it were me, I'd say $100 for a single-machine upgrade, or $200 for multi-PC home activation. You can find the End User License Agreement (EULA) in c:\windows\system32\eula.txt if you need to refer back to it after installation. |
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