Will you upgrade to Vista?

[Harrison]

I especially liked the 'dongle' anti-piracy solution that Ocean Software thought of including in a few of their games (Robocop 3, I think?). Brilliant stuff.

Didn't take long for it to be cracked though!

A lot of commercial software used to do that too which was always annoying.

After Effects 4 Professional and 3DSMax 2 were two I remember well as we had them both installed and running on the same IBM workstation at the time and the system would only ever detect one of the dongles plugged into the parallel port at any one time, even though they were meant to have a pass-through feature. This meant we had to keep going behind the desk to swap the dongles over!

I eventually "sorted" that problem by cracking both pieces of software! Not sure where the dongles went after that.

[Stephen Coates]

I would still rather just enter a code from the manual, or from a box (like in Windows 98 etc), than have to actually contact MS. After all, the computer that I am setting up might not have an internet connection, and I certainly don't want to have to telephone them.

[AlexJ]

After all, the computer that I am setting up might not have an internet connection, and I certainly don't want to have to telephone them.

It is a freephone number and an automated "enter the number followed by the hash" system IIRC. So you don't actually have to speak to a real person trying to suss out if you're genuine or not.

[Harrison]

It is still a hassle having to activate software over the internet, regardless of what the software is. But it is understandable, especially for smaller companies who cannot afford to lose too many sales through piracy.

[AlexJ]

As you may remember, I've regularly had crashes on my Vista box due to graphics problems. The latest NVidia drivers helped but there was still the odd BSOD. I've got the thing set up to do Automatic Windows Updates but today one of these wouldn't install so I went manually to the Win Update website. While there I noticed there were about 25 Optional Updates. Clicking to see what these were, there were ones dating back to March on there. Amongst them was an compability update for NVidia cards from several weeks ago. Because this was an optional update as opposed to a critical update, Auto Updates hadn't downloaded the fix to the biggest problem I was experiencing with the system! Well done Microsoft.

[Harrison]

That sounds about right. I try to check the updates site for XP about once a month just in case. And for automatic updates I have it set to notify me of new updates, but not to download them until I've checked. Sometimes they include big updates that I don't need.

[Sharingan]

I'm not sure how the situation is over where you guys live, but complaints about Vista have been mounting, both from consumers and consumer organisations alike. Coupled with major PC manufacturers reverting to selling XP-equipped systems, it's looking more and more like Microsoft made a huge mistake releasing its next-gen OS in its current form.

Unless my XP installation disc spontaneously implodes, Vista definitely won't be seeing the light in any of the PCs I use. Even if said implosion does occur, I'd rather go for Linux Ubuntu, or make the switch to Mac OS.