demodulated

I was thrilled to finally get my grubby mitts on a working copy of the Windows 7 beta, but had a nasty surprise waiting for me when I booted back into Vista:

The claim isn’t entirely inaccurate. Lucky for me I know the easiest (but not only) way to appease Windows Genuine Advantage.

I own a legit copy.

I tried Windows Vista back when it was still in beta and I quite liked the experience, but after it went gold I heard almost nothing but horror stories. I had no intention of even touching it until my curiosity was piqued by good reviews of SP1. I downloaded a pirated copy with SP1 slipstreamed and I loved it. I think it’s Microsoft’s best OS so far.

I loved it so much that I went out and bought it a few months ago. I’ve been dreading having to reinstall so I haven’t done so yet.

I rebooted and was stopped by a dialog before reaching the desktop. I was given the option to enter a new product key now or later. I chose now, typed in my legit key, and successfully activated. For some reason I still had a message in the corner saying “This copy of WIndows is not genuine.” One more reboot took care of that.

I don’t (only) mean to be self-righteous here. I just wanted to warn the 3 or 4 other people who use a pirated copy of Vista to curb their enthusiasm for Windows 7 (that’s why I SEO’d the heck out of the title).

I just wanted to volunteer to be an unpaid quality control agent for their multi-billion dollar cash cow, but I suppose Microsoft felt I wasn’t giving quite enough.

The scary thing is that I honestly feel a little relieved to be using a legit product key right now, even though I didn’t reinstall. For a split second a product key felt like a tangible thing.