Joseph Brower

As most of you know probably know, I don’t run Windows.  It isn’t because I don’t own a copy or anything, I simply haven’t had a need.  Recently I upgraded to Ubuntu 9.04 and decided to install Virtualbox.  This is an excellent virtualization tool and I figured I’d take my old copy of Windows XP Home and install it inside of the virtual machine.

As far as I know, that is perfectly acceptable since it is only going to be installed inside of this single VM and it isn’t installed anywhere else.  I installed it, that all went smooth.  I installed the guest additions (from virtualbox) that allow it to properly work with the mouse and such and was happy when everything was working properly.  Then I got the reminder to activate my copy.  This is something that I don’t have to deal with in Ubuntu, but I’ve fixed enough windows machines to know that activation is needed or your copy shuts off after about 30 days.  I’ve probably spent a total of many hours on the phone with Microsoft explaining to them that I am within my EULA rights to activate my copy (or the copy for the machine that I’m working on… as I occasionally repair friends computers and they may have required a reinstall of their operating system.)  This is unacceptable.  Not only am I being made to call a number so that I can use what I own, I’m also wasting my time doing so.  The internet activation didn’t work for me because I had installed this particular copy too many times (on the same machine) and they figured I must be doing something shady.  So my question is, where do I send the invoice?  If pirates don’t have to waste their time activating, why should I?  Wouldn’t I be in a better situation if I “pirated” the copy and sent a check to Microsoft?  That would enable me to use Windows without having to call in.  Anyways, I’ll be sending a letter to Microsoft asking where I can send the invoice for all of my time spent activating Windows for myself and on behalf of others.