haha lol, I know, it was just a joke. I would bet that if you were high you thought it was Steve Ballmer! It kinda looks like him! LOL
I guess it is alway a cat and mouse game. The problem with MS operating systems is that they are way overpriced (I've just happily paid a modest sum for a new Snow Leopard ) thus making it impossible for many people to buy it, especially in the emerging markets thus encouraging wide spread piracy. Another problem is that the stricter they become, the more inconveniences they create for legit users. With hardware prices of PC and MACs being closer, I guess we would see a gradual decline of the Windows market share as soon as the corporate world would embrace MACos.
Wishful thinking. IE took a long time to go down and still has close to 60% share. Windows is close to 90% and barriers to replacement to a OS should be much higher than for a browser.
ive tried for years to understand why windows is always priced so high instead of being chep so almost everybody buy it, and still cannot get it.
>90% share explains it. Consider it for yourself: if you controlled 90% of the market for OS and similar share for office suite, would you price your product cheap or extract rents. Similarly with Adobe. Buggy but expensive. As to Snow Leopard, it is definitely cheap and thus should be a hit in developing markets. But it is not. Part of the reason is the hugely expensive Apple hardware that can use that cheap software. Why pay Rs. 60000 or more (US$1,400-2,000). Rather pay low (<$500) for hardware and get the OS for free. I read that Snow Leopard has a significant presence only in the US.
Haha referring back to this thread, I think Microsoft's new so-called "Anti-Hacking", WAT, WGA or any other "blue sheet" names, these technologies are just providing MORE opportunities for hackers. For example, the technolgy of SLIC in BIOS just gives us a chance to get perfectly activated PC. Also, WGA from XP attracts more crackers' attention. (But actually you can simply ignore the WGA notification, just skip the installation. So everyone then forget about it LOL) The newer one, KB971033, the famous WAT, is useless at all to kick hackers. It just gives loader-developers a reply, "Your Loader/emulator successfully activated my product! Congratulations! Cheers & enjoy..." The reply is stored at the bottom of the System Properties page, and Daz should be the first who receive this reply. Honestly, M$ doesn't care whether you/we buy genuine Windows or not, because there's a majority of people pay for it but only a minority of people being naughty (us) to use loader. Furthermore, M$ earns more from firms and businessmen. Examples are some Office Suites like Office, Forefront, etc. Therefore, why will M$ have motion to kick hackers? It'd be better to relax and see how high is their market share comparing with Apple / Macintosh. SO the summary is, No need to worry about any Windows product activation! Thanks for reading. blackRanger
Well if they didn't charge so much for a OS that is useless in 90% of its features and bring a new one out every few years far less people would pirate the OS. Perfect example is myself in this area. I get the OS I gut most the crap out leaving my Windows 7 install size at 2GB installed. This is not even a major gut...my uncle runs a 500mb installed version. Sadly when a OS that you only bought for DX11 / Internet costs as much as a high end GPU its not a surprise people download it instead. I actually bought Windows 7 Pro and someone stole my key and got my copy banned. Microsoft basically told me to piss off when I called them up. Makes me really wanna buy Windows 8 now ~_~
I'm not an Apple fan since Apple uses Unix anyway - then I might just as well use Linux on my ordinary PC. Apple is only trying to transform a PC into a Mac by putting an Apple sticker on it and modify the BIOS in the SPI so that Mac OS X will only run on that "PC" when it sees the Apple BIOS. Luckily we can fool Apple too by running a loader on a normal PC and use Mac OS X on it anyways. There is no difference between a PC and a Mac - they both have EXACTLY the same hardware inside => Intel, ATi (AMD), etc. The engineers have only changed the shape and connector so they will not be compatible. Microsoft should rather try to buy a hacker / cracker group to work for them as the hackers and crackers know Microsoft's operating system better than they know it themselves. Microsoft should rather try to improve their OS so that viruses can't mess with the registry so easily (even a baby can #*&$&*#@ the registry up very easily). Maybe Microsoft should rather try to make their OS more virus-proof and less full of bugs and of course - not ask blood money to purchase a license for their s#itty, buggy, easy-hackable, resource hungry and always crackable OS. Microsoft's OSes are WAY too pricey. Crackers will just do it again - properly.