Mallignamius said:
I suppose that's a fair point. This isn't really an argument I'm capable of maintaining, though. So I'll bow out. I've seen points from both sides that I find difficult to argue with. Therefore, I'm still not convinced that it is altogether the right thing to do.All I had to do was google it? Now I feel like I'm being patronized. In any case, I did looked up OEM a while back and thought I understood it. And like 99% of people, when I buy something, I go more with my gut than spend time doing the research. I went with what made sense to me. Yet, I do read through every license agreement before installing software. I would have appreciated the same warning you say Newegg puts up. I bought mine from TigerDirect
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=335900&CatId=306". I don't see anything like that warning.
I am pissed so I may not be thinking too rationally. All I know is that it doesn't feel right. Notice that I haven't pointed at Microsoft's profits. That they are hyper-rich is not a reason I would use as a case against them. I am trying to be fair about this.
That some people, like Grandma, are not savvy enough to install- I don't see how this is a reason to limit the OS to one computer. Would it be fair to limit music and movies to one boombox, one tv?What does this mean?
I'll respond to everything in reversed order, starting with the last thing you spoke of.
I meant to look at the big picture of why they might do things as they do before you judge too harshly. The reason why the OEM windows is only made for one PC is because transferability has a value. By taking that away, they reduce the value of the product. They make up the money by selling more licenses than they would compared to if every person simply bought one copy of WinXP and had it installed it on their main computer (and then formatted their old hard drive on their old computer). By having it non-transferrable, that means you can reinstall it on the old computer if need be, but not to the new computer. The cost of the OS is included when you buy a new computer from somewhere like Best Buy or Circuit City. Computer prices would be higher at these retail stores if they had non-OEM versions of WinXP installed, so people like grandma or people who don't even understand that they can own a copy of Windows don't pay more money for something they won't use (any new computer they buy will probably come with another copy of Windows pre-installed on it with a difference license). OEM software/hardware is a good thing, but it should not be sold to those who don't understand what it is. I think Tigerdirect is at fault here for not having any explicit warning. I don't blame you entirely for this mistake, but you should have googled "OEM windows" before buying this product. (I don't use Tigerdirect normally, I love Newegg. I think they value their customers more.)
Now, if you ask me about software and prices, I don't believe capitalism is fair. I think that a fair profit should be made by a person's work, but risk plays a big part in it too. The more work/risk a person takes, the higher the reward should be if they succeed. I don't think that spending $1 million to create a piece of software should yield $200 billion in profits though, even if there was a very high risk of loss. I also don't agree with Microsoft's policy of doing whatever they can to make as much money as possible. In earlier versions of their OS's, when they had a product competing with another company's, they would actually create flaws in the OS that would prevent the software of a rival company from working correctly so businesses would be forced to buy their inferior product. I think this is highly unethical and it is for this reason that I do not approve of Microsoft. Also, charging for updates to fix problems with their software was pretty bad too. They also would cause major problems with their auditing of universities and large businesses, because the university or business had to eat the cost of letting them audit. Also, with the xbox, it was a pain in the ass. I wish I bought a PS2 long ago.. Although it was capable of playing DVD's just fine, it wouldn't because they forced you to pay $30 for their remote (the PS2 plays dvds out of the box and their remote only costs $10). And.. And.. And.. I could go on. Suffice it to say, I'm not Microsoft's defender, but I don't think they should be attacked unfairly either.
With your situation, you were able to call them up and tell them that your hard drive went bad so they would reset the code, and then you could install it on your new computer, right? Because of that, you actually ended up saving some money by purchasing the OEM version rather than the retail version of WindowsXP, but at the cost of a headache. I'd be pretty irritated if I were you too though, I have to admit.
With your philosophy, I recommend linux highly to you, but don't forget that you won't have DX10 or the ability to run windows games/software. Ohh, you might also want to check out FreeBSD. If I can run FreeBSD, I'd do that over linux any day. (It's a POSIX OS and it runs many of the same programs that linux does but is more stable. It has KDE and pretty much all of the other GUI's that Linux has. It has less of a driver base for hardware though and is a little bit more limited on what programs you can run, but most people can find more than enough programs for it.)
Philip
and told her my hard-drive died and that I can't seem to active XP, and she gave me a code that activated my XP for me, and now I am good to go 
