Quote Originally Posted by chew* View Post
XP is easier to steal........that about sums it up.

People crying about losing XP probably want full support and FREE ( stolen ) win 7.
I know I shouldn't, but everytime I see people talking about piracy without knowing what they're talking about I lose my temper...
What you said is one of the worst possible points to make a comparision about WXP and W7. Albeit W7 is harder to crack than good old WXP corporate edition (That simply worked out of the box because it didn't needed activation), it is nonetheless possible to anyone that got enough common sense to read a TXT file and follow the instructions. If that is too hard to do, then you are not a pirate. And please, use the word "pirate", not "steal", because they're NOT the same, unless the antipiracy ads succeded in brainwashing you.
Besides, as Bill Gates said once, piracy is part of the strategy of Microsoft to make Windows platform the mainstream and de facto standard:

As long as they are going to steal, we want them to steal ours. They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade
Basically, by using Windows, even if I didn't paid for it, I'm helping Microsoft to have a bigger OS marketshare and thus potentially more Software developers for its platform, feeding the egg-and-chicken scenario. If people was forced to pay for Software, Windows would become a small niche in third world countries where paying 100+ U$D for something that is so easy to duplicate is, plain and simply, ridiculous (That money is better spend on food, or a faster computer to actually being able to run and enjoy the Software). For Microsoft, being pirated is better than being replaced by a free Linux distribution. So actually, we could even state that piracy hurts MORE free Open Source Software market penetration while helps Microsoft to hold onto its massive OS marketshare by letting pirates get away with it. I can guarantee you that without piracy, Microsoft wouldn't be where it is at, so when you're talking about Windows piracy, never forget this fact.


So, what about me? I'm still using WXP SP3. If I wanted to have W7 for free, I would have done so a long time ago, so that is not the reason why I didn't upgrade. WXP, albeit old as a dinosaur, is a very fine OS, the only thing I'm missing from W7 is a few features that I don't have any use for (DirectX 11? No, sorry, no game I play requieres that), so I don't see any real need to upgrade when most of the things I do works fine, and the things that I can't get to work on WXP, don't work either on W7.
One decade ago I always upgraded to the last version of whatever Software I used (Applications or Drivers), but these days I'm far from the upgrading bandwagon because if you have something that works well enough, there is no need to fix what isn't broken. I'm started to get tired of seeing annoying bugs introduced more often that not in every new release, usually in GPU Drivers, that simply made me to not think about upgrading unless I have a real need to. And in the case of a BIG upgrade like a OS change, I would actually have to learn how to deal with whatever new obstacles W7 brings to the table that I currently know how to deal with in WXP. So, what do I win by switching to W7? Losing productive time that I need to spend learning how to tweak it to suit my tastes, so I can do with W7 the same thing that I can do on WXP? Thanks, but no. And if the day comes where I have to leave the sinking WXP ship, I would actually go to the Linux side (Where I have to learn how to deal with a new OS as with W7, but for what I want is MUCH MORE useful) instead of continue helping Microsoft maintain the marketshare.
Microsoft will miss pirates when we become extint. They will have to compete against something that is free, and is not itself.