I was going to write out a tragic tale of trust and love lost, but my writing skill just isn’t that strong. So I’ll make it short as I can.
I’ve had a legal copy of XP for about 6 years now. It’s worked well for me and I’ve been happy with it. However, I built my computer and it’s consistently upgraded once a year or so. Nothing extreme, just a video card here, some RAM there, sometimes the motherboard.
Every once in a while, XP will suddenly decide that a new component means that it’s in an entirely new computer and will demand that I call in to Microsoft and get a new activation code. Normally this means I have to dial numbers into an automated phone system, which is mostly painless so I lived with it. I liked XP enough to put up with it.
Last year, another upgrade caused XP to spaz. I called into the system…and was told that I had run out of activations. My legal, paid-for copy of XP decided that since I liked working on my computer, it didn’t want to work any more. I managed to get an activation code that worked by talking to a bored East Indian whose accent I deciphered just barely enough to get the key from him. XP decided that was good enough and continued to work.
Earlier this week, I attempted to plug a USB flash drive into the computer. I got a hardware error before it told me the drive was installed, and everything seemed fine so I thought nothing of it. However, Windows began acting weird and I had to restart, which is pretty damn rare. XP’s been very stable for me.
When I booted back up…I got the authentication notice again, telling me I had 3 days to get a new activation code before XP would deny me access again. But…I hadn’t done anything. All I’d done was install a USB device.
A little poking around showed me I didn’t have access to my DVD drive. I shut the computer down and opened it, reseated the drive’s IDE cable and booted back up. Sure enough, there it was.
Let me spell it out: XP demanded I re-authenticate because an IDE cable had jiggled loose.
The stupidity of the situation hit me like a wrecking ball. I would have to jump through hoops again? Because of a little hardware error? I’d have to talk to a guy halfway around the world in order to make Windows happy again? And who knows when it would happen again? I should be held a slave on some leash Microsoft deemed necessary, just because my computer is homebuilt and would need regular maintenance and upgrades?
Fuck that.
I’d claimed to my friends in the past that if Microsoft ever withdrew support for XP enough that I couldn’t use it to do what I wanted any more, I would switch to Linux or Mac, or find some alternate OS rather than go to Vista. My opinion of Vista aside, I held to that.
I’m now running Ubuntu on my desktop. Being new to Linux, it took me a couple days of learning the system and a few reinstalls when I botched something, but it’s now running smoothly. The Linux community is fantastic, the OS itself is surprisingly user-friendly and capable of so much more than XP, and the things I use my computer for often have been seamlessly converted – gaming works better on Linux these days than ever before. And best of all, I’ve cut the leash Redmond had on my computer.
My property is my own. I don’t need a watchdog making me jump through hoops to prove I haven’t stolen their software. I paid for it. It’s mine. I will use it as I choose to, thank you very much.
Okay, I still use Windows 2000 on my laptop. There’s some things I still have to use Windows for. Besides, Win 2K doesn’t demand reauthentication every time the DVD drive comes loose, which happens more often than you’d think.