My major problems with this don't involve piracy at all. They're philosophical and practical.

First, I paid a fairly large sum of money for Windows XP. I've got the store receipt showing I paid for it fair and square. Then I had to go through product activation before I could actually install what I'd bought. Now they want me to install more (probably buggy) software for their benefit (I derive no benefit from it that I didn't have before they started this, and I don't consider regaining what I had before to be gaining anything). I don't take kindly to being treated like this.

Secondly, they're pushing more and more to make the updates automatic and invisible. I DO NOT WANT my computer downloading and installing updates, especially ones with a proven track record of breaking things I NEED to have running, behind my back and whenever it wants. In many cases I don't even want the download to occur, whether it's because of various policies of the network I'm on (eg. at work the policy is "No updates whatsoever that aren't cleared by MIS.") or just because I don't want to suck up limited bandwidth at the moment. So automatic updates aren't feasible, and MS is making it harder and harder for me to update manually. I don't like this.

I have to ask myself this: Would I take this kind of treatment from any other vendor I dealt with? Or would I simply find a vendor with a little more respect for the customer? And yes, I know MS is aiming at pirates, but the simple fact is they're still hitting me with this and I'm the one paying hundreds of dollars a pop for legitimate copies of stuff.

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Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/columns/295/30289#30289