Vista Can Run Without Activation for a Year

An anonymous reader gave us a heads up on this article for people who like putting things off. It begins: "Windows Vista can be run for at least a year without being activated, a serious end-run around one of Microsoft's key anti-piracy measures, Windows expert Brian Livingston said today. Livingston, who publishes the Windows Secrets newsletter, said that a single change to Vista's registry lets users put off the operating system's product activation requirement an additional eight times beyond the three disclosed last month. With more research, said Livingston, it may even be possible to find a way to postpone activation indefinitely."

Comments

Why bother?

[BiggyP]

Since microsoft have made it perfectly clear that they don't want anyone running their OS without paying, why continue to try, how about giving one of the many shiny desktop linux distros a go instead?

Re:Why bother?

[Corporate Troll]

That is what they say, but I don't think that's true. They rather have me running Vista illegally than running Linux legally. Why? Because it increases their market share, which in turn benefits to them. I am also more likely to choose Windows in my business decisions or demand Windows Vista from my employer because "that is what I know".

For students and poorer people they damn well want them to pirate Vista.... They might one day become paying customers.

Piracy is a form of advertisement, as odd as it may sound.

(I run Debian Etch, thank you very much)

How long before Microsoft patches Vista

[lthown]

Seriously, they do have this little windows update thing that sends out updates, I'm sure it's mostly trivial for them to fix the flaw