Annoyances.org - re: Question about 'How do I skip the Product Activation in Windows XP?' (Windows XP Discussion Forum)


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re: Question about 'How do I skip the Product Activation in Windows XP?'
Sunday, June 5, 2005 at 5:19 am
Windows XP Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by Matthew D. Healy (1255 messages posted)

Microsoft has stated publicly a number of times that, should they ever decide to turn off the Product Activation phone lines for any product, they would provide users with a means to disable Product Activation before they stopped answering those phone numbers.

Of course, if this happens after the end of their Product Life Cycle schedule, they would stop issuing security patches, as they have done some time ago for NT4 -- so NT4 servers can still run today, but you'd better put them behind a good firewall because NT4 has some bugs that will never get patched. But the issue of patch support is a distinct issue from Product Activation.

I think much that has been said about WPA pertains not to WPA per se, but to other things Redmond does that are perceived as being customer control tactics. Such as not fixing NT4 security holes, which forced a number of companies (including mine) to upgrade some old servers that were otherwise working just fine.

On Saturday, December 4, 2004 at 10:41 am, obts wrote:
>Does anyone know when µ$ will withdraw the activation phone/on-line facility so XP
>is effectivity killed off and users will be forced to upgrade to a new O/S?

Written in response to:
re: Question about 'How do I skip the Product Activation in Windows XP?' (obts: Saturday, December 4, 2004 at 10:41 am)

Responses to this message:
re: Question about 'How do I skip the Product Activation in Windows XP?' (Brandi: Sunday, March 19, 2006 at 12:25 am)

re: Question about 'How do I skip the Product Activation in Windows XP?' (Sidevalve: Tuesday, July 4, 2006 at 7:48 am)