Well I am still trying to figure out what the microsoft advantage is. I have a problem and its a big one.

I bought a Dell inspiron 1501. cheap laptop perfect for college. Came with Vista and dell bloatware. Reinstalled Vista and all drivers first night I had it. It was a little faster but to sluggish. Cannot blame the computer. Installed all updated drivers. all windows vista updates disabled the AERO interface. still slower than molasses in january.

So I take my XP home disc from my old dell PC intall XP update it install all the drivers get SP2 everything. Works blazingly quick. Perfect. everything I asked for. Now 1 week goes by and I complete my first ever home built PC. Needs a Operating system. install XP pro which is currently on my other desktop. set it up go to activate it and I am told that in order to activate it I need to buy a new licensing key. ok fine no problem inconvenient but expensive. I think about it and being on a budget a new OS key is kinda pricey. Wait I got Vista home premium lying around and my new pc will run it flawless.

Fast forward its installed updated perfect. now time to activate. have to talk to microsoft rep. explain whats happening. we cannot activate it because it came preinstalled on another PC from a manufacturer. in my eyes that is highway robbery. I now have a useless coaster.

So I tell them my laptop has a copy of XP on it that is validated and came from another computer preinstalled and that they had no problems activating that. .

I am really mad. I do not think microsoft is justified in doing this. it is in the Eula but I do not think they have the right to enforce that if the computer I am using it on is slow and sluggish and unable to cope with it.

that’s a bummer Saber123316.  the issue is probably the deal that dell worked out with MS for that copy of vista to be pre-loaded.  if you had bought a copy of vista it may have been easier for you.  its fairly common for those OEM/pre-load/recovery disk versions to only work on the laptop it was intended for which is a bummer. 

my MS story is that had once bought a copy of XP, loaded it and registered it ok, HD crashes so i reload it, of course the validation (before you had to give DNA to validate) fails, so i call MS and after a rant from the tech and the guy telling me the license was for that HD and not that computer which is just friggin ridiculous i eventually get my stuff validated...

And that MS, is why everyone steals your stuff.  When its less hassle to steal than actually buy and register, people are going to steal.