[nzlug] recondition laptop windows licence revisited

[Simon Bridge]

I remember discussing, publicly, the nature or the windows licence for
refurbished (second hand) laptops.

I speculated that the refurbisher must erase the drive (to clear
possible malware) then install a fresh licence. It seems I was correct
on the first point but incorrect on the second - it is the original
licence that gets put on there.

The licence only allows this to happen once.
If you buy a refurbished machine and want to sell it on, you are
expected to erase the HDD (or just not activate it.)

Jack will probably want to have a word with his suppliers on this one.

Anyway, I fi-nally got around to activating the license on one of these
nx5000 machines. The online activation told me off for obtaining a
pirate copy, but gave me a phone number JIC. The phone activation told
me off for exceeding the allowed number of installations. I went to a
human operator, who had trouble understanding anything outside the list
of questions in front of him.

With some effort, I was able to explain the situation enough that he
could find the correct screen.

This seemed to be a routine matter - possibly the first owner/user had
reinstalled windows at some stage and neglected to mention this when
they sold it on (returned it to the rental firm). Not unlikely as it
probably was last used in a school. Though there could just be a glitch
in the activation system.

MS gave me an activation key - now it doesn't nag me. I couldn't draw
anyone on whether this counts as activation #1 or #2 though. I don't
suppose anyone knows? I mean, AFAIK this is a special #3 activation by
arrangement with MS and not actually covered by the eula!

Of course, it's fun to list all the things that windows won't do...

Doesn't play my multimedia files (ogg)
Doesn't mount my work partition (ext3)
Doesn't read my documents (odt)
Doesn't render web pages correctly.
Doesn't configure my wireless card (intel) properly (though it does
switch the led on).
No option to hibernate.
Recover from suspend best out of three.

Can't find a central repository to obtain software to install.
Software install is erratic and inconsistent.
Bewildering array of proprietary licenses

The only thing that works properly is the cupholder.

Oh yeah - when I last had windows (98), MS supplied a free coaster with
the computer - a nice plastic one, quite attractive, had a windows logo
on one side, the other side was shiny. Hole in the middle was a bit of a
puzzle - but it was just the thing for keeping my desk stain-free...
anyway, didn't get one this time. Don't they do this any more?