Dear All,

Last night down at t'pub wi'mates of a techie nature. After discussing
Middlesborough's recent cup win...... & Leeds'es financial
difficulties ....

Anyway...

Mate has a PC (brandname). It came preloaded with XP. He has yet to open
the XP packet (or so he says...)

Now he's building a new PC for himself & palming the old one off on
wife & kids (basically kids.....)

So he proposed installing his copy of XP onto 2'nd PC (tut tut). He says
that as XP came with the other machine he has never registered as he has
never been asked to register.

My Position : Mandrake just as good so why bother with XP at all, I can
have legit copies copied for Friday eve (when we usually meet).

This bod: "I like XP, I have never yet paid for an OS & don't
intend to start now. It's either come with the box or I've
"reused" one which did. I have a legit XP install disk which I
have yet to touch."

Middlesborough supporting Oracle/Unix type: MS is evil go with linux on
moral grounds. 

Win2K user: Same basic position as Geo (i.e. stick with Win2K) etc. coz XP
is loaded with nasty anti-piracy "features"....

This last bit lead onto the Win2K bod & Oranix bod making all sorts of
suggestions/statements which I rubbished as insane myths wrt XP. However
truth be told I don't know if they're myths or facts so....here goes:

OK both machines will be on same (home) LAN.

Fact or Myth 

A) If you install the same copy of XP on 2 machines & XP realises (e.g.
via some sort of LAN traffic) it will turn off one of the machines/stop it
booting
&/or will send a message to MS in some way.

True or false?

B) If you go to Winupdate, MS will "know" that you have the same
copy on 2 machines & at that point MS will send a message to the
machine which will shut it down/ prevent it from rebooting or will send BSA
stormtroopers around to beat your children till you cough up the readies
(cash to you yanks).

True or false?

C) That if you change hardware it will then check with MS &...yup you
guessed it...shut down the machine or prevent it from re-booting, send
round the BSA stormtroopers etc.

True or false?

D) That none of the above happen with Win2K.

True or false?

E) That XP OEM is different in it's behaviour wrt all this compared to XP
"retail box set".

True or false?

F) Any other similar things wrt same XP copy on 2 machines?


I'm hoping some of A,B or C are true but I am sceptical. Bod has promised
that if anything like the above myths are facts then he'll try out Mdk9.2
before going in search of a "less than legit" copy of Win2K.

He jumped from Win98 to XP & he's not going back to 98.

Me + Oraunix type kept making the point that he can legitimately install an
OS w/o paying by using Mandrake but he likes XP & is used to it (but
post convo with 2k user would "settle" for 2k) & frankly he's
a bit of a MSOS bigot (& has been since about MSDOS 5).

I am torn between wanting bod to go for Mandrake & wanting to prove the
2k & oraunix bods are both tinfoil hat merchants.

Answers before 7-8 pm UK time Friday please 


Adam

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