Vista's Tougher Anti-Piracy Feature

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: blimey
This Vista activation scheme may be a real drag for tech enthusiasts who like to play with new motherboards a lot. I purchased two retail XP licenses (one each for desktop and laptop).

I never use the one for my desktop because I tend to swap out the motherboard every couple of months and the XP activation sever choked after the fourth activation on a different motherboard. I now use a VL XP disk in order to forgo activation, but I still consider my installation licensed because I can't use the copy that I purchased (without a lot of telephone calls to activate and re-activate).

I may be in the small percentage of users that MS doesn't care about, but unless there is a way around activation in Vista, it will be no fun for me. I suppose I can just call MS a lot, but they do give you a hard time after multiple activations.

The thing that really bites people on this is when they are running OEM copies of XP. OEM copies make sense for XP at this particular time, but if you guys are looking to build your own rigs with Vista, go retail. You know you'll have Vista for a long time and will likely go through many computers/motherboards with your copy. Go OEM and you're gonna break your license and have activation problems the first time you do a new computer/mobo.