Maybe he’s selling her a used retail copy of Office?
Maybe she had to reinstall last year and forgot to reload her legal copy?
Check with your electricity provider for future surge protections. Our local power company installs a “whole house” surge suppressor on the electric meter and guarantees your electronic stuff up to 50k for a paltry two or three bucks a month added to your bill.
Yeah, right. I see computers all the time that suddenly display the “invalid product ID” notification after Windows Genuine Advantage is installed. Invariably, the owner says they had their computer upgraded to WinXP at a computer shop sometime in the past. Computer shops install pirate software all the time.
Not necessarily. The OEM license for Office is pretty inexpensive and the shop may have a whole bunch of them that they want to clear out before Office 2007 arrives, and a motherboard swap would qualify for the OEM product.
You spend much time around the computer biz? Shop piracy of OS’s and Office is a HUGE problem. Giving away $70-$80 of software at wholesale/after OEM rebating prices is going to hurt even pretty well established shops. Margins in computer parts are pretty tight and cannot tolerate alot of “giveaways” of paid for product. Stuff like this is often done as a cookie to make a customer feel better about the shop, when done to new builds this kind of piracy can lead to undercutting legit builders who pay for licences correctly by 15-20% on low end systems. If I put an office suite on a budget machine its Open Office not MS.
Oh and its 2007 Microsoft Office system
Not legally. It wouldn’t be an OEM product AFAIK since a motherboard replacement upon failure is an exception to the rule. Either its a repair and NOT an OEM build situation or its an upgrade which would require a new windows licence to be 100% legal.
Another comment on the surge suppressors: I never use them, and I recommend you don’t, either. As I think someone else pointed out earlier, surge suppressors only stop surges, they do nothing for sags, when the power level drops a little bit - and I’d be willing to bet money that most computer damage is caused by the latter–especially power supplies and hard drives. (And I do realize that the OP is an exception).
The solution is a UPS (“Uninterruptible Power Supply”). This is basically a battery that’s plugged into the wall, and you plug your system into it. It has all the capabilities of a surge suppressor, but also provides power for up to a few minutes in the event of a power failure, and supplements the power for sags. These used to be fairly expensive, but you can get one now that will power even a fairly high-end computer for $50-$100. You need to know approximately how many watts your computer draws (including the monitor if you want to keep working during power outages) in order to buy one (or read the UPS box: they give example systems; make sure you estimate high.)
They’re available online and at almost all office stores that sell computer components. I’ve got one for every computer, and about the only hardware failures I’ve seen since installing them (10 years or so) have been fans failing. You do need to replace the UPS or it’s battery every 3-4 years, as with most rechargable devices.
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Over a year, actually.
Zombie thread. Closed.
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