$30 is what the real price of this software. If microsoft cared to price their software more reasonably then there would not have that many pirated copy floating around. But charging $230 for piece of software when the whole laptop cost $399 is ridiculous.
I too bought the same disk for $29.99, but have never used it because experimenting with activation methods is so much fun. But i reckon, since I've paid my dues, MS should have no compalint. The lopsided thing about this deal was it was never offered to students in countries like China, India and Brazil. Seriously, I'm unable to see any method in MS's madness.
I also don't understand Microsoft's madness over Anytime upgrade. Starter to home premium is $90. I don't know many people willing to spend that on a netbook. Now if it were $30-$50 I think they'd see much higher uptake. Home premium to professional is $130 yet the difference in price of retail versions is $105.
Agree with venu, testing MDF tools is funny and most important you can learn a lot. Also agree with those claiming that MS soft is expensive. I have flashed old Lenovo desktops with success (learning a lot about bios), have used daz, razor, ir4,chew and smartsmarks and planning who to use windslic (also learnt a lot). Have activated office 2010 witjh different methods, leaning as well to input keys, reading about scripting etc. But at the end modt of the time I am using ubuntu with openoffice, all I need as home user is by far included in this combination.
@WinFLP, Wow, god, a waste of money, activating a software is not difficult but just lazy to do it. I think many people are willing to buy genuine software and collect the hard copy (product boxes, license sheets, etc). However, you must be reminded that if you lose the license copy, even the holy god cannot save you. Just hope that next time you won't lose it again. That's a reason why I hate paying for a software. Don't think that the disk and the "piece of sheet" mean that you are a good boy, because everyone who enter bios mod section are good boy (u know wt i mean, they mod their bios w/ SLIC 2.1 and are MORE GENUINE than the genuine). Also, the hard copy of license is only for home-visit check if you don't use it in an office. The only purpose of the COA and the disk is to tell the guy who visit you and check your software legality that you are GENUINE. So anymore reflection after being tricked?