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It's 2013, and Windows Activation Is Still Frustrating
Deathspawner writes "There's little that's more frustrating than being a legal customer and getting screwed over by the company you're supporting. If there's a perfect example of this, it's with Microsoft's OS and its millions of customers that have had to ring its tech support lines for activation help. Recently, a Techgage writer got bit by an issue with Windows 8 — caused by Microsoft itself — and wasn't even able to call to fix it. Microsoft has two problems to solve here: it needs online chat support (like most large companies in 2013) and it definitely needs an activation system that doesn't make things difficult for its legal customers on a too-regular basis."
As a university student, my uni grants access to MS products like Windows, Visual Studio etc. It really was a matter of entering a serial and that was all that had to be done. I take it off the shelf windows activates more obtusely?
If memory serves, Windows phones home some data about the platform it finds itself on when it is activated(I don't know if it is particularly identifiable, or just a hash of whatever seems likely to be system specific, or somewhere in between), and some versions can be very unhappy if they come to the conclusion that they've previously been activated on different hardware. Enough time on the phone will get you a nice guy in India who will probably be able to fix it for you; but it definitely can happen.