I would think that given they've sent out the House party packs with Win 7 that they must have the servers online for activation. So those that are going to be demoing it can activate their copies.
Activation has been functional at least since things went up on MSDN and Technet...about 3 months ago? And lots of people have been activating giveaway copies or student things from MSDNAA, etc. since as well. The main surprise is that places would risk their relationship with Microsoft by selling early. I do believe MS themselves have been shipping early a few places like England though, since a postal strike is expected by the end of the week right when Windows 7 deliveries would otherwise occur.
I don't think this are original versions, cause I also have already one at home and the activation always gives me that error, which also was before vista started officially. They will put they activation servers on tomorrow ;D
Hmmmm... when I tried it, I got always the 0xC004E003 error... wayne, now it got by slic activated =)
maybe the activation servers were only accepting certain strings of the keys to activate early. Like all keys that attempt to activate with the same group of characters gets activated only or something like that. That would explain why you could not get yours activated. I was able to activate my system with a MAK key early on though.
Windows 7 is probably the most leaked OS Microsoft has ever put out, almost makes you think the MS does this on purpose. The more people talking about how good it is (and for once it is) the more people may buy it.
nice comment dude. I know this was leaked so bad. I don't even think vista was leaked half as bad as this one did.