News Redmond instigates mandatory piracy check

I'm counting the days until someone says that I can't use the copy of XP I bought legally under my university's alliance with MS. Maybe this is the day!

Also, their automated activation system is a load of crap. You get maybe 5 re-installs of a legal install and then you have to spend ten minutes on a ridiculously slow voice-activated activation process of reading and typing like 60 digit numbers one at a time. How on earth did they get away with that?

 

It's just another case of the pirate users having a trouble-free computing experience, and the legitimate users having to put up with a poorly thought-out activation process which causes no end of irritation. Microsoft are stupid if they think that someone won't find a way round this.

They need to concentrate on making their products more accessible, affordable and secure. If I pay the ridiculous retail price, I expect something of quality - most certainly not a piece of software that requires the 100+ security updates needed to stop you getting the latest worm through a basic security hole (buffer oveflow) that should have been found in the first place.