Yes Harrison you're right, but that's the way software is going - purely a subscription based system that benefits the companies and their cash flow but limits consumers and their freedom.

I wouldn't be surprised that all commercial games and operating systems start to become a service rather than a product, where you agree to conditions and must pay them a monthly subscription fee. Once you stop paying the fee, you lose the software.

They'll do this under the guise that it's the only way they can combat piracy.

Problem is all these direct debits and long contracts we are being forced to adopt in modern society are great for businesses, but is a nightmare for consumers cash flow. Miss one wage or lose your job and you're in the sh*t, especially since you'll get charged an extortionate amount for each direct debit rejected! We really need to start fighting back and get the power of our finances back in our hands instead of us all being good little sheep.

Linux will probably come out the winner in the end however - in it's current state, it can do 99% of what an average home user needs out of a PC. Web surfing, emailing, picture editing, open office - all work flawlessly.

I'd imagine once support stops for XP Microsoft will probably end activation of new installs and only activate old copies. They may release a final service pack that removes activation, but that depends on how well the uptake of their latest product is going as they don't want everyone sat around refusing to upgrade.

Thank goodness for third party solutions!!!! I have bought one copy of Windows XP, but I refuse to buy several copies of the same operating system for each computer I own. I also get legit copies for family and friends. It should be one license per person/household, not per computer, for private non-commercial use.
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I've taken the plunge and installed SP3 and i've had no problems so far.
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Same for me. I own one copy, but no more. I'm not paying £160 just to have the OS on a second PC.
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I bought XPPro and now have it installed on 3 different HDD with no problems.
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Thanks for being the tester!!!

I'm still hanging on waiting to install, but I'll probably do it sooner or later. It really does look like nothing more than a tidy up of current security patches.
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Same for me. As they are all installed and running from the same IP it has no problem activating all of them and allowing the updates.

Regardng SP3. I might install it on one of my secondary PCs and if that goes smoothly then on my main PC. I never trust service packs when they are new. Too many things to mess up a perfectly working setup.
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If by tidy up you mean takes a nice chunk of HDD space then yes. It works fine but i'm going to have to do somwe extreme tidying of my HDD now.
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Hehe, typical Microsoft practices! I remember when I ran CCleaner for the first time on my XP install. I found some 1GB of files that "disk cleanup" and XP had failed to clean!!!

Software abuses the fact that PC's and storage are so powerful and abundant in this day and age.
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So true. Most of it is lazy programming. Look at current games on the PC and how much HD space they need, plus how much ram and other system resources. If they were restrained by a fixed hardware platform (console) then they could easily optimise code to run on it, but because it's on the PC they just keep adding more ram or faster graphics cards to a project to fix any such issues and make the game with less programming skill required.

Back to Windows. There is always a lot of junk left over after installs and updates. Most of it in the Windows directory with long cryptic directoy names. With most of this being the installers that are not needed after the code is installed. Others do it too, especially graphics card drivers where they create a new directory in the root of the C drive to extract the installer's content, but after install they don't tidy it up and remove it.
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I find Dustbuster is one of the best utilities for getting rid of crap. Even better that CCleaner.
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