Microsoft Rants and Conspiracy Theories
I've been trying out the Yahoo Messenger Beta 9.0 for a couple of months now but it was only yesterday that I found out that it is another of Microsoft's attempt at, for a lack of better word, depriving pirated Windows Users.
My brother, although Internet savvy and a very good graphic artist, isn't very good on hardware and software issues. After 18 months of using his Neo laptop, he finally had to have it reformatted. It was never reformatted ever since he got it and I was never able to use it so I had no idea what are it's specs and what came along with it. He got it "free" from our PLDT Mydsl subscription. Anyway, enough with the history.
Initially, we thought it didn't come bundled with an OS so he borrowed a pirated copy of WIndows XP Professional from a friend. I was able to reformat and install the pirated copy so all I had to do next is install the driver. I popped in the Neo CD that he gave me along with the other installers and I was surprised that it was an installer for Windows XP. I then checked the bottom of the laptop to see if there was a Windows sticker with the product code and I found it happily residing silently underneath. I copied the product code onto a piece of paper and immediately restarted and installed the Windows XP. Once I was done, I was again surprised to found out that the OS bundled with the laptop was Windows XP Starter Edition. >.< I didn't think that Starter Edition was made available in the Philippines.
Anyway, one of the reasons I preferred installing the OEM's of Wind ows XP Home that came bundled with my Toshiba Satellite and Dell Inspiron was the free 90 day trial of Windows Live One Care. I love Live One Care. It's a great antivirus, antispyware and overall tune up tool for Windows. I've been wanting to purchase a product key but it's currently not available in our country which is really bad because it's cheap (only $50 for a year for 3 PC's) yet efficient.
Since I loved Live One Care, I was sure my brother would appreciate it too so I downloaded the setup file and tried to install it. I got an error code and I found out that it won't run on Starter Edition. I searched for a way to upgrade the Starter Edition to at least XP Home but there was none. I couldn't buy another copy of Windows just so I could install it on my brother's laptop. It wouldn't be practical and would render the Starter edition license useless. I couldn't resell that Starter Edition license because it would only work on NEO notebooks.
I was getting very pissed so I installed Internet Explorer 7 instead. I thought my brother would like it because he uses Mozilla primarily because of the tabbed browsing. I started browsing some blogs and at some point I realized that some adsense ads don't appear on IE7. I thought this problem was fixed a long time ago and is now isolated only to Vista installations of IE7. Just imagine all the revenues bloggers and webmasters are missing just because of this.
When my brother checked up on the reformatting's progress he saw that I installed the Starter edition and asked if there was a way I could change the theme to something like the Classic XP theme and if I could lose the watermark that displayed Starter Edition across all windows. He also complained about being able to run only 3 programs on it. I tried googling about it but I didn't get to come up with a solution. Finally, my brother asked if I could just redo the whole thing and install the pirated XP Pro instead. He was willing to never turn on Automatic Updates and risk missing urgent security patches instead of getting stuck with a sucky Starter Edition.
After finally getting to install the pirated XP Pro with Service Pack 2, I got around to installing the softwares that my brother normally uses. Instead of troubling myself with removing the Windows Genuine Advantage nag screens, I told my brother to not turn on Automatic Updates instead. I tried installing Yahoo Messenger Beta 9.0 on his system and I kept getting an error message. The error message prompted of some image files being part of Microsoft stuff. I initially thought I was just missing a plug in or a driver but after a couple of tries, I began to suspect it had something to do with Windows being not activated. I then tried to install Yahoo Messenger 8.0 and the installation ran smoothly. Sure, YM beta 9.0 still had a lot of bugs like missing contacts and not being able to invite people to view your webcam once it's already turned on, but it's still full of potential.
If only Microsoft provided an upgrade path from XP Starter Edition to XP Home Edition, then I wouldn't have had this problem. Also, why limit Live One Care usage to all XP and Vista editions except the Starter editions? If this is all part of some elitist plot then I barely see the point in doing so. If Yahoo Messenger Beta 9.0 was designed for and limited to authenticated Windows I hope Yahoo realizes how many users they are depriving of new skins and emoticons, Flicker integration, direct posting of YouTube videos, an in line media player and many new features. They should have sold themselves off to Microsoft if they will actively take part in their monopolistic ventures.
