Product Activation

[Stuzb]

Ok, to put you in the picture, I recently bought a new computer and obviously needed to install copies of Microsoft Office in order to read/edit all my old files.

Now, me being me and not wanting to break with current culture I 'sourced' a copy shall we say and promptly installed it. Microsoft being Microsoft isisted I activate my product which I promptly tried to activate over the net and surprisingly my new copy of Windows XP was already registered and I could only use it another 50 times before it would revert to 'reduced-functionality' (read: no functionality). Fair enough I thought, I only needed to print a couple of invoices for some of my freelance work and then I would abandon Office as I didn't really need it.

Naturally, I needed Office a bit more than I thought and suddenly it had reverted to reduced functionality mode and I was unable to do anything more than view documents. I figured the problem needed to be sorted so I tried clicking on the 'activate by phone' radio button, it promptly notified me about some MS privacy crap (let's face it they don't care and by using their software you've already allowed them to view the contents of your computer but I digress), accordingly, I skipped over it until I got to the screen where you select your country and you're presented with a code and a telephone number, figuring I wasn't about to call MS I rethought my strategy and caicked back until I got to the activation method screen where I decided to try again using the internet method and this is where the fun begins - Microsoft promptly activated my product and with a restart of Office I now have full functionality

Gotta love Bill for that. :)

[method77]

or you could get Open Office and call Bill to tell him to kiss your ass

[cube]

i got one i think

i'll look for it in the morning

[nate]

call them

it's not like you have to give your name

some people's paranoia astounds me

it's a pain in the ass, but it isn't hard or dangerous to do--the people on the other line couldn't care less why it was reactivated a zillion times