XP update starts to weed out pirate keys
Found on The Inquirer on Tuesday, 09 November 2004
Microsoft has started implementing features in upgrades to Windows XP which specifically prevent users of pirated keys from upgrading parts of the operating system.
Owners of pirated keys in Western Europe tell the INQUIRER that scheme has now kicked in. What this means, for example, is that if you upgrade the Media Player to version 10, and you're using a pirated copy of XP, you'll lose functionality on your machine.
Microsoft said in Dublin that it would launch the scheme in China at the end of October, and throughout Europe early next year. But it appears to have implemented it early.
Pirate users are being invited to either validate their copies of the operating system, or to download and pay for a full version of Windows XP.
WMP10? An overloaded player hogging up every resource that's free. I stick with the default WMP6.4; this one works just fine with the codecs and doesn't bloat your system. And in the cases where the player plays stupid, there is always VideoLan. Besides, how long will it take until this "update or die" solutions gets "fixed"?