Honestly, I'm sick and tired of people whinging about SP2. If you do it RIGHT, meaning you use your Gold or SP1 copy, Slipstream the copy and burn the result, you will be able to install Windows XP with SP2 integrated already. Whoever's still installing thier gold version of windows, then getting into the OS to launch the SP2 installer, is asking for trouble.
Slipstream SP2 onto your gold install, You'll be FINE. SP2 works just FINE if you INSTALL from a CLEAN hard disk, not upgrade over something else or just do what YOU think is right. There's a logical way to do this, and installing anything onto a clean disk will most of the time guarantee you a fully working platform to work on.
Anyways - Yes, I remember the same rumors popping up about XP when it came out. One of the most ridiculous I've heard before it came out was "that Windows will not let you install any other hardware once you've installed the OS and you can never reinstall it." It all boiled down to Activation, which is silly in itself.I honestly do not see what's wrong with Activation in the first place, speaking from the perspective of a network technician. All it supposedly does is make a hash of what kind of hardware you have in your machine, and ties your product key to that hardware hash. Sure, every time you make a major upgrade, you'll have to re-hash the system info to your product key. Now, speaking from the personally-paranoid "I want to keep my system secure" viepoint, I can understand why some people absoluetly refuse to activate thier systems, or crack activation. Sure, people are afraid that a whole bunch of stuff is going to be sent off to M$ violating privacy and stuff like that. I think it's still silly, because if you install Windows on a bare drive, how in the hell is it going to know what other stuff you have on your system at install? That, and if you're using a firewall that's smarter than ZoneAlarm, you'd be able to see what traffic leaves your system. You'd be able to SEE what components are trying to be sneaky and talk to M$, IF they do that at all.
I'm thinking that this new "trusted hardware" is all about the DRM stuff that's going on right now. Just as an0n said, playing UNLICENSED content, not Pirated content. Licensing probably meaning it's not digitally signed with a DRM signature, cept for the new form of encryption. Notice, it's about encryption, or the encryption of files, not the playback of pirated material.
Honestly, do you honestly think that people are going to have to just toss thier old systems away just to use Vista, that M$ is going to make thier software only usable with a new hardware chip? I honestly doubt it. Everyone said the same exact thing when XP came out, that hardware couldnt' be changed and old systems would have to be thrown away and all. It was NOT the case. It was simply an inconvienence for system builders and tweakers who like to keep thier case open and swap out hardware a lot. All you'd have to do after your 3rd activation was give a phone operator a new hash code, and say "No, I have not installed this on any other machine" or something to that effect. They give you the hash, and you put it in, and everything was activated.
What a lot of people also say, like about the new activation, or other related things, being more complex, there's only a certain level of complexity that a lot of non-technical computer users will put up with. Beyond that point, people will simply not use the software because it's too difficult to make it work, even with tech support. If M$ thinks they can force a product this much more complex on the public, which I honestly dont think it will be as complex as most people are making it out to be, the public will not use the software.
Maybe M$ just needs to learn the hard way though, that is IF they do this.
