Mr Brown said:

The whole microsoft licence thing is a rip off, all this client/server crap and user cals I would never pay for microsoft software out of princible plus is easy to get it for free if you know were to look. Bill gates makes more than enough money, he ripped the idear of windows off apple plus all the crap over IE and netscape Microsoft want to take over the world

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Tis all true what you say, but anyone running a business even if its only a single server feeding 5 clients they are always best to keep it right, its just not worth it if found out, plus getting upgrades is the way MS gets you in the end, or SP's. The thing is tho the license thing is so complex that very few IT guys know what to do, so in my experience they welcomed the input of MS to sort it out as many times we saved them money as well. You can have site license, company license's, server license's, client license, it goes on & on I know, I was an account manager for licencing!

I'm not pro MS in anyway, Linux is a better OS, but Office is still the best unforunatley, & even the real MS haters agree on that one, but it is expensive.

PS good company to work for as they give loads of freebee's.

Worked for DEC for a few years all unix and Dec alpha system then jumped ship to compaq when they bought Dec, but it true even tho don't like saying it ms office is rather good

thouyght you had keys hetz?? has any1 got any, or will a router do the trick without me updating to win xp?

Sorry Leon I completely misunderstood you! Thought you were pished and had lost the house keys or something .

I will PM

leon_in_uk said:

thouyght you had keys hetz?? has any1 got any, or will a router do the trick without me updating to win xp?

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I ran my Xbox through a router and had no probs at all setting it up.. Use the speedtouch 510 and when you buy it tell them to configure it for xbox live and all you do is plug it in.

so it will work with win98se? and a router?

not too sure if your problem may be AOL.. so i can't say for sure, I had my xbox on live and on xbconnect using win98se and the speedtouch modem router through BT openworld.. but I have heard there may be problems with AOL.. don't quote me on that though as its been a while and im just goin on a distant memory there.

Win 2000 Pro is the one I use - it is much better than 98SE. ME is just 98SE tarted up. It's not really an upgrade.

I've not had the slightest trouble with Win 2000 Pro, yet ...

But yes, giving away dodgy copies of any Micro$oft product is highly illegal. MS may not be chasing individuals yet, but I would think they just might soon.

One thing I might add is that there are dodgier copies of XP that will trash your system if an attempt is made to install them

Am I right that 2000 and earlier are no longer being supported? I do know that on the www.microsoft.com website you can still download service packs

There was talk of it Steve but I think the peasants revolted and they said we could have support for a little longer. I also use Win2k which I got due to it's stability and it's caused me no problems. TBH I don't need the bells and whistles of XP apart from one but I can cope without. I agree about ME, it killed my PC within a week when I had it .

the only thing i needed it for was to network my ethernet from my comp to my xbox,, and 98se dont support what aol want, thinking of it, a router wont make any difference to the network on win98 will it? because its goin straight through the modem and router??

AOL :bang: shoot yourself now and save the hastle.
You will need to update your AOL software in order to use connection sharing, and their software only works with a certain selection of hardware - There's more than likely a list on their site. To be honest 98se is fine for networking and connection sharing, it just takes a little time to set it up.

The comment about 2k being crap ?! WTF XP is utter poop in my oppinion. However it is just win2k with a load of visual ******** that you dont really need and most people dont really want.

98se should do everything you want and faster than xp (on an older machine), just read up about networking and connection sharing.

J333EVO said:

The thing is tho the license thing is so complex that very few IT guys know what to do!

Office is still the best

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i agree... it is very complex.
I'm liking Star Office at the moment from Sun... free to download... very good, just like MS office suite and its compatible with it too.

XP can be made to look like 9x/2000 if you want it to within seconds....!

Sorry for being OT.

steveyensen said:

Win 2000 Pro is the one I use - it is much better than 98SE. ME is just 98SE tarted up. It's not really an upgrade.

I've not had the slightest trouble with Win 2000 Pro, yet ...

But yes, giving away dodgy copies of any Micro$oft product is highly illegal. MS may not be chasing individuals yet, but I would think they just might soon.

One thing I might add is that there are dodgier copies of XP that will trash your system if an attempt is made to install them

Am I right that 2000 and earlier are no longer being supported? I do know that on the www.microsoft.com website you can still download service packs

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Yes Win2k is very stable, I use it & I got Win & Office XP Pro for £15 each(then sold on eBay) when I worked for them, but no they will not come after the individual, as there's to many people to chase think of the logistics involved in that, then multiple it world wide
What they will do & have already done so in business circles is prevent you form buying a cheaper upgrade pack to the next product without proof of license for previous or previous +1 version, therefore making you buy full priced product, or offering you no support unless you have unique license specific key, and lets face it how many service packs & bug fixs or security updates have you had on your present product, thing how vulnerable it would be to hackers, spamers constant blue screen etc etc without these. Or if you want to be all conspiracy theory about it release a bug in all of their own copies that will then be copied & can only be fixed by proof of license, but thats a bit extreme, or is it...............................................................?

space said:

AOL :bang: shoot yourself now and save the hastle.
You will need to update your AOL software in order to use connection sharing, and their software only works with a certain selection of hardware - There's more than likely a list on their site..

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If your using the modem router you wont need connection sharing as the xbox just plugs in with the ethernet cable, and the pc via the usb, that way the xbox just bypasses the pc and therefore don't need to share anything.

As far as I know it won't help using a copy of XP with a key that someone else has used, because you have to register your copy of XP online within 30 days of installation and it recognises keys that have already been registered.

It makes me wonder how someone who doesn't have or want an internet connection could run XP.

pghstochaj said:

XP can be made to look like 9x/2000 if you want it to within seconds....!

Sorry for being OT.

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True, but it's still XP, that load of elderly male bovine excrement.

I had to install XP on both my PC and laptop as Windows 98SE just won't work with any of my wireless networking kit. Plus my mobile phone software (Nokia 6230) needs at least XP SP1 to even install. XP's actually not as bad as I expected, its not that different once the tellytubbyland interface has been changed and all the s**te "user-friendly" features disabled. Only prob is that my laptop (an old PII 366) runs ultra-slow with XP

To register XP without a 'net connection you have to phone MS with your serial number; they then give you the activation code. The copy I've got has conveniently had this little irritation removed but the keygen is another way of getting round it as it used the same algorithm to generate the code that the MS call centre muppets use.

Weird. Assuming your nokia software is similar to mine for the 6600 it works fine on win2k, and networking is very easy to set up as well. Plus it runs faster on slower systems as it has fewer bells and whistles.

Hmm...dunno aboout that Helz, I spent ages disabling everything on my 2k install, and It was dire. Put XP on, and that was just as dire, as standard...It certainly made it less stable though (it was very unstable as it was!!)