One of the things that makes it interesting is that it speaks of "an incipient consumer rebellion." In the short history of computing, consumers couldn't get their updates fast enough. The product life-cycle was born, and Microsoft wallowed in profits. And Bill Gates said "It is good."
But then something happened. Windows Vista, with its demand for high-end hardware, and the difficult support for legacy hardware and applications, left consumers wanting... to stick with Windows XP.
Normally, when a new Microsoft OS makes it into production, the old OS would hit the dust bins after a couple of years. Interestingly, however, after consumer versions of Vista went on sale in January 2007, four months later companies like Dell were once again selling the majority of their machines with XP. This consumer rebellion subsequently prompted Microsoft to revise its product life cycle, and extend the freshness date of Windows XP a little longer.
Ah, but that Windows Genuine Advantage that you so willingly undertook to protect yourself from running pirated software is now going to bite you. Somewhere in that license agreement that you failed to read is a clause that says that there is a limit to the number of times you can activate your XP license on new hardware. Gotcha, sucker. This is a slight variation on the carrot & stick approach -- if you don't go after that juicy expensive carrot that's being dangled in front of you, then you get jammed from behind by the stick.
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