MS: "Plead" or Pay on Third 'Device'

Below is what Shanen Boettcher, the general manager of product management for Windows Vista, had to say about the one transfer to new device restriction in the Vista EULA, according to a tech journalist at the Houston Chronicle. Boettcher is reported by other journalists elsewhere making similar comments. Also note that there is quite heated end-user discussion on this issue on the official Vista Team Blog (http://blogs.technet.com/windowsvista/, see comments in response to blog post on Oct 10th). Nick White, another Vista Team manager writes that the issue is "being discussed" and that he will post any changes/news to the blog.
For full text of extract below see: http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/ar [...] anger.html

"Boettcher said that, as with Windows XP, an algorithm in Vista is used to determine the hardware fingerprint of a system. Change enough of the fingerprint, and the system is considered a new PC. Two things that are sure to trigger that, Boettcher said, is replacing the hard drive and/or the motherboard.

I know some gamers who will swap out motherboards several times a year, as newer processors and system boards are released that promise more power. Will they be forced to pony up big bucks for a fresh copy of Vista with a second motherboard upgrade?

Yes, says Boettcher. But he added that there may be "gray areas" in which there are exceptions. He urged hardware enthusiasts who run into this situation to call Microsoft's 800 number and plead their cases.

Enforcing this will be Vista's controversial new Software Protection Program, a beefed up version of Windows genuine Advantage now found in XP. If SPP detects that the license has been violated, or that you may be using a pirated copy of Vista, it will render your PC virtually useless.

Boettcher was very aware of the concerns over the licensing terms, and said Microsoft is listening closely to them, but at this point the company doesn't plan to back away. He said the issue will affect only a small group of people -- the average Windows user doesn't routinely swap hardware or rebuild his/her own system."

That's not what he says. "Will they be forced to pony up big bucks for a fresh copy of Vista with a second motherboard upgrade? Yes, says Boettcher."

Your claim that "they will most likely reactivate your software" is a rather optimistic interpretation of "But he added that there may be "gray areas" in which there are exceptions. He urged hardware enthusiasts who run into this situation to call Microsoft's 800 number and plead their cases." I read a "gray area" to mean someone with a motherboard or harddrive failure of some kind in which replacement isn't a choice. If you choose to upgrade your mobo a second time then you have to buy a new license under the terms of the EULA.

What they say they'll do and what they end up doing may be different of course but we'll have to wait and see.

Well, exactly. So why write this into the EULA? It annoys lots of paying customers, encourages otherwise honest people who have coughed up money for their product to lie, and enforcing it is impractical. What's the point?

Over on Suse Linux Rants, Scott Morris, jokes that "The only logical explanation I can find for this behavior is that Microsoft is tired of having the majority of the market share." That's it! Microsoft is marketing Linux! Steve Ballmer must be a mole, a fact he cleverly disguises with frequently disparaging public comments about the penguin. Or maybe they are just greedy and arrogant. Not sure I care beyond the perverse entertainment value provided by the Microsoft juggernaut.

Which is basically what I said Don't know why everyone made such a big deal about it tbh......

Hmmm, would that work? I've never used Norton Ghost or a similar product. Anybody want to do a how-to and maybe make that a sticky?

I'm not sure that would work. I use Powerquest DiskImage (which is now Ghost) and it backs up an image of the installation onto another drive, CD etc. It's such a pain installing Windows, all the drivers, and then all your software and updates from scratch that backing up images every now and again makes a lot of sense. Presumably if one did this the device hardware signature could be reinstalled. But doesn't the OS check to make sure sure the signature matches every so often? If you changed the hardware significantly the hardware signature would show a significant discrepancy and you'd have to reactivate.

Well, that, as you say, is your opinion. I think fair is what they can get away with. They obviously think they can get away with a lot given their user-base and maybe they are right. However, I think they will find themselves increasing in a bind with this type of license and its associated business model. Think about it. The big breakthrough with Windows came in 1996 with NT4. W2k, XP, Vista have just been refinements. You got lots for your money in NT4 compared to what else was available at the time. W2K added some essential things, XP added a few more refinements, and Vista maybe a few more. They practically gave away NT4 and W2K because the user base for those OSes was fairly small. XP and Vista, glorified SPs with lots of eye candy, have had increasingly restrictive EULAs and have cost significantly more. While all this was going on Linux and open source were taking root. The latter were pretty irrelevant to most of us but that's changing. Linux and open source apps are maturing rapidly. And Linux server software is already making big money for HP, IBM, Oracle and others through hardware sales, support, other sales of commercial software running on Linux servers. Increasingly the gap in easy of use, functionality, etc. with Windows is closing. Right now you can download and install a Linux distro that will give you a lot of what you'd get with XP, plus office, plus a bunch of other costly Windows apps and, even if you aren't a geek, it probably won't be any harder to install than all Windows stuff and it will be less demanding in terms of hardware. And it's more secure. And it even has cool eye candy that will run on your existing graphics card. And you can install it as many times, on as many machines as you want, and run as many virtual instances as you want. Now these Linux distros are still young and a little rough in parts and maybe lack one or two things, for desktop use, but that's all changing very rapidly. At some point, and this will be the case for an increasing number of desktop users, you have to ask yourself "What do I get from a Windows system that I can't get from a Linux system and is it worth the money?" Maybe its this year or next year or five years from now. Of course, there are users who make their choice for other reasons, but Windows isn't like OSX. Apple people love the design, the whole sleek, cool, culty thing that Steve Jobs projects and are happy to pay a premium. Microsoft doesn't have that sort of relationship with most of its customers.