Man I hate to get into this thread, but here goes. My argument all along has been that MS should do what they want, it is theirs, after all. The fact is, the registration thing is in place, so it's gonna have to be dealt with. The main arguments seem to be comprised of: 'This new system sucks' and 'Who's gonna pay me for the 5 minutes I have to take to register it'. I guess for the former, do you have any better ideas? I'm guessing this wasn't the first idea they came up with. Do you think maybe they hired an Evil analyst to come up with this idea? No, they have been cornered. This is just another step to take to try to help protect their product from piracy. For the second argument, I guess I don't have as much to say, but almost every piece of software needs a product key. What happens if a customer of yours (yours being a very general statement, not pointing at anybody in particular) upgrades a machine, and has to reinstall your software on it, only, whoops, they misplaced the little yellow sticky that the product key you gave them was written on. When they call you for a new key, do you have to pay them for the 5 minutes it takes out of their day?
Anyway, sorry for barging in on this, but it looked like a pretty good mosh pit.
John