if they put this much effort into producing a bug-free product, and sold it at a reasonable price, this problem would heal itself.

Give the same price to everyone on the planet and your won't have piracy problems: why some people are able to get Windows and office for less then 5$ USD while i have to pay 100's here?

Microsoft (and International crime syndicate: MPAA/RIAA) should be forced to sell they disk the same price everywhere: If selling a disk under 5$ work to curb piracy in some part of the world... Why not not in America?

Those computer shop did not sell illegal/bootled/pirate copy of windows. they just just found a better supplier of GENUINE microsoft software.

Actually if you have a COA sticker then your OK... you pay for that shiny sticker not the disk!

All you have to do is find an OEM copy of windows (Home/Pro) and reinstall using the key on the PC.

Alternitivly if you contact dell they will supply the original restore disk for the PC it normally only costs a few £ more than postage

Or finally, as long as the install that is on the machine is the correct version of windows (ie Home OEM) you can just reset the product key on the machine and re-enter the one on your COA... MS have a tool for doing this.

Or (finally finally?)

If its the right version (home.pro oem) and wont activate... Dont just do it online... phone the free number, try to activate, if it fails speak to some one, 9 times out of 10 the questions stop at "How many PCs is this installed on?" (as long as you answer 1!!

I resell used PCs and have to go through variations on the above at least once a week with no problems.

MS are great as long as your legal.

Well said David. Both concise and accurate. The main problem is most people who complain simply aren't legal. MS has a right to protect their product, their bottom line, their legal customers, and their stock holders. That's just the way it works. No brag; just fact.

I agree with aManFromMars. Microsoft piggybacked on piracy on their rise to ubiquity and now that they're as close to a monopoly they can get, they feel that they can squeeze people all they want. And the sad thing is, people are now trapped: they're "addicted" to Microsoft products because that's what they're familiar with and they refuse change because they've reached an age where change is uncomfortable to them (Scott Adams' God Debris details this in it's foreword), but they still want it at a reasonable price, which Microsoft isn't offering them at. So, they do the only thing they can do.

Damn, my mind is totally gone alright. Suddenly I can understand aManFromMars clearly -.-

I remember as a young un' getting my first PC (a 386 sx33) in 1992, the days before Dell, PC World and Tesco, when most people would hunt down an independent shop to get a bew system build to their spec, at eye watering prices compared to today. It was also a time before torrents, so after a quick phone call, a treasure trove of apps and games had 'fallen' on to the hard drive to fill almost half of the 80mb HDD - ahhh memories!

The truth is that in many instances, a linux distribution will suffice! That's the plain unadulterated truth. I don't want to throw Ubuntu back at you but it's a very valid distro, stable, offering all the essential tools to surf the net, edit "Word" documents, spreadsheets and even presentations. If you do games like I do, you're not going to install Vista, especially if you happen to have a bevy of games that worked just fine on XP and which for some unexplainable reason wont function (not even install) on Vista. So the future, for those who don't want to fork out cash for what is grossly overpriced software, could be a mix of Linux and a games console....so there's your alternative to all this rhetoric...just flush MS and head for Linux it's open source, it's free, it's getting increasingly user friendly...and did I say it's free?!

We've been forced into the fact that, unless we assemble it ourselves, we HAVE to pay for some operating system already installed on a computer we buy.

I can get and install whatever operating system I want, assuming driver support. Forget the legalities for the moment, I have several discs laying around from old purchases, Win95a all the way up. Lately, however, I've been playing with others such as Ubuntu and Fedora.

If I'm using those then I most certainly should not be forced to pay for something I don't want. I've tried ordering a single system and multiple systems from dell and gateway in the past without an OS but couldn't so I ended up assembling them myself.

It still galls me that with most laptop suppliers I have to pay Microsoft whether I use their product or whether I throw their os in the trash.