Let me clarify, that I meant that his opinion it does. He may be correct. I wouldnt be shocked by this at all. Companies frequently put things in contracts that are pushing the limits or more. It is in their interests to protect themselves as broadly as possible.

Right ... I understood you.

Its the California part that would shock me. With all the technology development in California I would think that California law would heavily favor IP protection.

I think he explained why he thought this. Im just saying what I think he meant. I should have probably let him speak for himself.

On the general point of California law and a licensing agreement, from my experience in various contract discussions, and Im not a lawyer, it was pretty clear to me that no contract can invalidate a law in the state where the law is in force. It doesnt matter what any other jurisdiction says. A clear example of this is credit rules where if you read the fine print you see the different rules in each state. You just cant overcome state law with a contract. Not saying that happened here or even what a remedy could be; but just that a licensing term that goes against state law isnt enforceable and a licensing term to exempt an entity from state law cannot do so.

Damages?

He is saying, and I agree, that it isnt an IP issue. It was a legal copy, there is no IP issue in Microsofts relationship with him. California is possibly the most consumer friendly state in the country. It is that someone cant sell something that keeps shutting off.

I installed the hardware before installing the drivers, which meant turning off the machine, then booting up and installing the drivers. A reboot wasn't required after driver installation, which is why, though I did the NIC change on Thursday evening, the re-activation requirement didn't show up until Friday evening. At some point -- I don't recall when -- I did a reboot and turned off the motherboard's built-in NIC in BIOS since it wasn't needed any longer.

I think you should file a claim against MS for the fraud (in small court as you've
mentioned in other posts)

For one, i think the only virus I have on my computer is Microsoft. If it wasn't
for my employer, I would have gotten away with it a long time ago.

For those of you who say MS does not collect personal information,
its not true.

If you have access to sniff your own network, watch what MS Windows does
when you browse the internet. It sends a lot of information to MS servers
as a query. This is enough to construct your habit patterns, what you
have installed on your system and what you browse.

They may not directly collect the information, but your operating system
will send enough clues to paint the whole picture.

When you down load updates, MS knows exactly what you have on your system.

I've always had a legit copy, but I don't like the idea of someone gathering
information on me without my knowledge. I block most of such traffic on
my firewall(s) and avoid using IE.

Using Linux, UNIX, MacOS (another unix) is a great idea, but for the common
users, it may not provide everything that easily.

I have MS Office (legit, work provided) but I choose to use Open Office
which is a freeware tool. Its not the best out there, but its free.

Browser I use is FireFox. You have a better control over what you send out
and its easy to manage. It may not work for some sited designed only
for IE, but it works great for the most part.

I can understand some of you may not be able to replace MS with something
else, but you do have some options.

All I can say is - I love my Mac.

This thread just gave me another reason to not install parallels and run windows.

/E

I agree with this completely. This is our corporate standard, as well, and what we recommend for our customers. That's why we're running XP with IE 6 as our standard image - IE 7 is still too new, and breaks too many things. (For personal use, I highly recommend FireFox).

I also would not recommend planning to 'upgrade' to Vista if you're shopping for a new personal PC - wait for one with Vista pre-loaded, if you really want Vista. I am certain upgrades will break some things in your preloaded system.

For my personal use, I'll buy a Mac rather than buy another Windows machine, when its time to replace a system at home.

That's the reason. Activation has changed recently. That change led to an activation bug that hit a lot of people:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811632

That led to yet another change.

Google is your friend.

But they'll keep his searches indefinitely. :(

Am I the only FTer that likes Microsoft?

No, there are at least 2 of us.

I've been with companies developing medical software for years -- this is totally unrealistic. Sure, we have doctors (a few) who ask us to port applications to Macs (or LINUX). We would have to charge 20 to 100 times what we charge for Windows applications in order to break even (because Windows is where the market is at).