Hmm. That's what I was wondering. We picked up4 IBM Thinkpad Micros (the little 3lb suckers) recently, and they came with no media, just a "restore" partition. Hell yes, I'd use other media in that case.. or, if you need to just do a repair install, E-Machines, Dell, HP's "System Restore" discs don't help a lot as you don't want to just format your harddrive.
I'm not sure this lives within the spirit of their DOJ settlement. CW -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of warpmedia Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2005 8:38 AM To: The Hardware List Subject: Re: [H] Here's a weird ruling from MS That has to be the stupidest reasoning I heard. Never mind that drivers change constantly, or that you could use another CD from the same model (or image of to make a new disc). It just flat out violates the principal of a free or low cost replacement media that I thought the copyright law was supposed to be entitling us to now that we are mostly prevented from making TITLE 17 archival backups by DMCA. Wonder how this logic works when faced with the HDD only copies of windows that used to ship. Don't make you disks, no original media. Or scratched, copy defeating original media. Can you copy or can't you copy, that is the question! You'd think they weren't making money hand over gorilla fist already. They shouldn't be profiting from media replacement nor using such a lame argument against using like media to generate a replacement for legit license holders. So many artificial barriers with no real basis for their existence short of branding everyone criminals before being proven such, we must be in England something. =/ Thane Sherrington wrote: > I have a lot of people come in that need Windows reinstalled. Sometimes > they have the Windows CD, sometimes the COA, rarely both. If they have > the CD, I call MS and get a number generated for them. If they have the > COA, I use my CD and their COA. I was talking to MS anti-piracy > yesterday, and I asked if that was "legal." Guess what? It isn't. If > you have the COA but no CD, you are not allowed to reinstall the > software from another CD. You must call MS, order a new CD for $45 > (that includes shipping) and wait 7 to 10 days. > > I tried to explain that a)if they had the COA and that meant they had a > license to run the software, then why would they want to wait 7 to 10 > days, and b)$45 was a lot of money for a CD with no license even > including shipping. Heck, $10 would make MS money. The guy agreed that > it did take a long time and that the price was high, but he pointed out, > using another OEM CD might cause problems because: 1)the old Windows I > was installing over might be customized (I told him I generally erased > the drive) and 2)the OEM CD I had might not have all the drivers. I > explained that I could download drivers, and he conceded I could do > that, but triumphantly pointed out that I might not want to. At that > point I gave up. > > T > > --- > [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Anti-Virus] > >
