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>Agreed. I figure if I go XP I'll just have to live with the registration muckety-muck. I'm personally agin it but there's not much to be done on this and I figure it is the harbinger of things to come.
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Bill,

While I think that you are right in your assumption that the registration muckety-muck is "a harbinger of things to come", it is precisely that reason that has made me decide that my next machine will be Win2K Pro!

Anything that I can do to discourage MS from pursuit of this invasive strategy feels far better to me than simply accepting it. Encouraging them simply gives them reason to install more and more of this crap, everywhere.

It can be argued that someone who is honest has nothing to worry about with all this crap. That might even be true at this point, but who knows where this can lead to next???...or after that???

I find it most off-putting because I have registered every single piece of MS (or other) software that I have ever bought (even after CraigB. here informed me of the fruitlessness of doing so as regards MS software). MS could have, it it had wanted, maintained some record of my registrations. Using those records the registration process could have been designed to cut me full slack upon first registration of any product with this new scheme. That way I would be free to do what I have always done, which is to replace components on machines or vary the (licensed) OSes on my machines as I see fit to meet my needs.
MS chose, though, to DISREGARD all of my prior registrations and treat me the equivalent to any pirate out there!!! This wrankles me greatly. It shows a complete disregard for existing and honest customers, a fact that does not endear any company to its customers.
MS, whose business is to promote the application of technology to expedite/simplify things, chose not to invest in development of application(s) that could process its database of software registrants to allow differing 'levels' of compliance checking depending on the registrant's record on file. This is a pretty sad example to set for both customer relations and for the industry generally!!! They took the easy way out and it is I that must pay the price!!!

I have made the decision to NOT encourage MS to continue along these lines until they show some regard for its honest customers. Accordingly, there will be no Office XP on my machines for the foreseeable future, nor any more XP OSes than the single one I have now.

The sad thing is that the DIShonest folks out there are already using 'cracks' (I think that is the correct term) to run all this stuff without registration anyway, so the people that MS is truly jeopardizing are their honest and loyal customers. As I said earlier, almost any other business wouldn't dare to do that kind of disservice to its clients. We shouldn't let MS get away with it either. Just accepting that the current requirement is just a harbinger of things to come is giving them tacit approval to go ahead and crap on their customers further!

We really have to be nuts to accept that kind of treatment from anyone, let alone a "business" that is after OUR MONEY. Spending OUR OWN MONEY gives us rights, and it's about time we did things to exercise those rights.

SET SOAPBOX OFF