I am seriously considering building myself an uber-PC sometime in the near future. I am, unfortunately, forced to use XP since the main use of this pc will be for gaming. The cost for a full retail licence for XP pro is $300. I’ve found sellers on eBay listing OEM versions of XP pro with a “non-peripheral hardware component” bundled in for about $130. I know that there would be no support from MS because they expect the support should come from the OEM providing the software, but this wouldn’t be an issue.
I want to have a legal OS on this machine, otherwise I’d just use my current upgrade version of XP. Would purchasing an OEM license be considered piracy? Would I have to use the “non-peripheral hardware component” in my pc to ensure legality? This is going to weigh heavily on my decision to build because $300 is a significant portion of the total cost and it may be cheaper to purchase a pre-made computer.
This kinda reminds me of when I was in college. People would advertise tickets to sold out shows in the college paper like this: “For sale: one used pocket calculator - $500. If you act now, receive two front-row tickets to the sold out Eagles show, absolutely free.”
1st if you have Win 98 -> ME or 2000 (maybe nt and 95) you can get the upgrade version for about $100 less (that is if you are not using it). Totally legal and installable (you will have to insert your win 9x disk during installation - it adds about a minute or 2).
I don’t know if you must use the part - I assume not, if so then you can use it but decide to uninstall it. again I don’t know.
If you’re so bent on saving money by purchasing from a shady source, do it for free and hit the warez sites.
Or you could buy your OEM Windows from a legitimate company that sells PC parts, aquired the CD’s legally, and has been selling them at such cut-rate prices for a long time. Multiwave and NewEgg are two I have bought from.
There’s some MS stuff that’s only supposed to be sold OEM, but MS themselves has droped the requirement on this greatly. When I bought Win98 OEM a couple years back, I had to buy a mobo or bootable drive. Last time I ordered a MS Natural keyboard, it was also OEM-only, but all I had to buy was a $5 mouse. --And I snagged an optical mouse for that price too, no less.
…
(actual story: tonite was the first time ever I had even looked at a warez site. Honest to God, swear on my left nut. I ran across a link to some straight-arrow decent porn, and it turned out to be a warez site instead. I think. I never did download anything. Popups, popups everywhere, vote so-many-times and come back here and then, you’ll begin to get----more popups. A half-dozen at a time. As far as I can tell, the “free fonts and clip art” sites are run by the people who flunked out of “how to design a warez-site” school. Mozilla crashed three times, IE6 crashed twice, I never did see anywhere to actually download a file. I looked because I am buying Photoshop+Illustrator in a couple weeks, thought I could use them early so what the hell.
Couldn’t figure it out though.
Oh well.)
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OEM versions of software is completely legitimate (barring, of course, the store selling pirated copies and CALLING them OEM). Check out Directdeals.com, they have a large selection of OEM software, including Windows XP. You should recieve just a CD and a certificate of authenticity. This is a good option if you don’t need a manual or tech support, and want to save money.
Would it be ok to buy a no CD OEM licence for Windows XP Pro ($115), and then download the actuall OS using a p2p service?
That looks like the best deal to me.
k2dave, I only have one win98 license, and that’s supposed to stay with this pc which I got the winXP upgrade for, so I can’t go the ol’ upgrade route (not legally, anyhoo). Thanks for the suggestion, though.
DougC, The companies I saw selling the OEM winXP on ebay are legitimate parts sellers. Nothing shady about the way they’re doing business, other than using ebay to sell stuff. Your second point was exactly what I was curious about. Your third point answered it.
FDISK, thanks for the answer and the link! I’ll go this route then.
Many of the links on these warez sites just circle, it seems. The only “legitimate” popups were for online casinos (ha ha!), the rest of the popups were for other warez sites…? I had mozilla set to stop the pops which did stop most of them, but IE would often open 3-4 windows per link clicked, and had to be three-fingered out. Some said you could get “special-express-hax0r-WTF” or something service if you gave your credit card number. Uh yea, okay, I’ll get right on that.
My curiosity was piqued though: as you might guess, I returned, and my diligence of closing popup windows for roughly 20 minutes was rewarded: one site I managed to follow all the way to the end was—(drum roll)—a download site for P2P filesharing programs.
So now you know.
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Also downloading versions of P2P services will most likely get you one of 2 leaked versions that M$ knows about. These leaked versions do not have to be activated but they also can’t be updated with the latest XP service pack. THere was a recent artical on cnet about this.
The only version of XP that I know about that doesn’t need to be activated is XP corperate which I don’t think you can get a license for (not unless your buying 100+ copies or so). Because of activation this is the only versio that you can use by downloading form warz or p2p that you can use. Some xp cracks have developed in activation but M$ has provided fixes in the recent service pack to repair that.
One loophole that you may be able to exploit is that cetrain software will allow you to install it on 2 computers. This is ment to allow you to install it on a laptop and desktop. IIRC win xp falls into this catagory under some situations (this is what I read before it’s release - things may have change… During your initial install and activation you write down the activation number (you may have to call M$ instead of using the net to activate). When you have that number you can somehow use it on one ohter install. Another method is to wait 6 months to activate your ‘laptop’. Look through the licencing agreement to see if it’s still there.
Another option is to try to get a cheap copy of an earlier windows version then take the upgrade.
Read the EULA, it comes with the software, it says what you can do with it…
I once tried to sell some software with a piece of the computer it came with on ebay & MS shut it down within a couple of hours. Others are able to do that, I found out they just write MS & show them that they have a legal right to sell it. Thats why some auctions stay & some don’t…
If you have some sort of business, you can get XP Pro full with some trinkets from MS, in their retail sales area of their website, for $39.00 with tax & shipping, about $52.00 It is not for resale & one per person. I don’t know if this is still happening but I know its the second time this year I saw them do this.
From what I understand, for consumers, Windows XP the OS is a one license - one computer deal. Office XP the Application Suite is the one with the loophole for one license - one desktop & one laptop.
As usual, of course, the pirates have already sidestepped all of these measures. You can now get versions of XP that will automatically add SP1 during the initial installation. They also have a version of Windows 2000 that slipstreams SP3 during installation. Amusingly, the pirates make Windows easier and quicker to install than the monolithic company full of highly-paid workers that made it in the first place.
Also, I think they have some sort of patch for people who installed the original pirated version of XP and now want SP1. It changes the serial number to one that’s not flagged as pirated by MS.