It works like this, everytime you boot and at least once an hour you get a message reminding you it's not a genuine copy and a link to allow you to easily get a proper key for it...........here's the reward if you do click through and buy a key it will be at half the price of the retail upgrade version at $119 dollars............I believe they are sending out exactly the wrong message to people here, if you bought a retail copy legally and value the software enough to buy it you have paid double the amount that someone who is willing to steal it and later when caught, their punishment for which is a half price version .

So peeps like us who value their work and are willing to pay what was never a really good price and have supported their system from it's outset don't get so much as a thank you, our money is gonna be used to let acknowledged thieves the opportunity to get what we have at half the price. I wonder what we are supposed to advise people who are just thinking of buying Vista from their local retailer.......I can barely bring myself to type it, but I sure know what I would do.

Option 1. Buy a genuine copy from a retailer at lets call it world wide currency (whatever) unit of 200 whatever

 Option 2. Obtain pirated copy, fail to activate, get caught, make it genuine by paying just 100 whatever

Now tell me crime doesn't pay and will Microsoft expect anyone to buy their next OS from retail ?

Steve

Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 Mother Board
Intel E6850 Processor, oc'd to 3.4ghz
4gb DDR2 800mhz G.skill Dual channel ram 
MSI GeForce GX8600GT Twin Turbo Video 
Aspire Xdiscover case with lots of fans
Antec 650 Watt PSU, 250 gb SATA HD, 2 Samsung DVD writers

It's the way the community at large has tried in vain to deter people from trying this type of download by spreading propoganda which I suppose may work for some and put them off, but if you ever look at the number of people in torrent swarms downloading the latest games and films etc; around the net there is conservatively 2 million plus people day and night illegally downloading stuff.

The biggest irony against the software industry giving out the same old, 'well if you want your PC full of viruses' etc; is that probably the largest single software group downloaded is for security products, anti vi and malware, spyware etc;

I just don't see how they can complain how much money they loose by people downloading their product illicitly then when discovered give them a hefty discount, thank you very much.

For instance, heroes (TV series), is available to stream for free off the nbc website, only for people in america. I'm not american, and I dont care to wait till feburary to watch season 2. Solution? Download the episodes via torrents.

Another example, the other week a Futurama movie was released to dvd. Again, only in america. It doesn't even have a release date for the UK. Again only solution is to download the dvd rip via torrents so that I can watch it.

Asus-SLI Deluxe, AMD x2 4400 (oc'd to 5000), x1900xtx (oc'd), 2GB Corsair XMS RAM 2-3-3-6 (4x512), 500GB Maxtor HDD w/ 32mb cache, 300GB Maxtor HDD w/ 16mb cache, Creative Audigy 4 (Daniel Driver Set), HVR-1100 Dvb-t hybrid TV card, 580W Hiper Type M PSU.

5.0 score on Vista Ultimate x64, 6040 3DMark 06' score on XP

Microsoft is still punishing the legit users here. If it is a pirated copy, you should have to pay FULL RETAIL PRICE. No discounts. No pass go. No collect $200. And an additional fee to cover anti-piracy.

Well, at least I know how to get Vista for cheap on another computer... Better than OEM...

--

Dustin Harper

I can think of no other instance when an illicit act is punished with a 50% discount off the purchase price of the article gained unlawfully.