Windows 9 Preview to Launch This Year, New Activation System in the Works – Rumor  

echrada, post: 33877, member: 177 said:

The fact that one would not have a choice. Look what they did to MS with IE, in Europe MS had to offer the user a choice of browsers, not only IE.

Hardly the same thing? You have a choice, buy or don't buy a Windows operating system. I'm not trying to be smart @ss, but I don't see how this is an infringement on any bodies human rights. Like I said, its no different than a cell phone contract, or buying cable TV etc. IMHO that is.

I would be lying if I said that I liked that new activation method.
Worst come to worse, you can create a LiveID (or an Hotmail, etc etc) that you are going to use solely for that and not necessarily your email account. Because if Win9 is going to please, that's what I'm going to do (and if it's going to have that activation method).

Let's be honnest here. It's not going to stop pirates, especially if you are going to offer alternate activations for Enterprises.

If your reluctant to use a Live ID and this new activation happens, its just going to make things worse for you. When I say "you" I'm not referring to any one forum member, just those that don't want to use a Live ID. I don't get the "I don't want to give them my e-mail address" thing? It's just the address, your not giving them the e-mail address and the password so Microsoft isn't going to be reading your e-mail. Anyway, I do respect peoples right to choice and if you don't want to use a Live ID don't, that's fine. Just keep in mind the pit falls your creating for your self when you do it. Now I'm not saying I like or dislike this proposed new activation method. Its just rumors anyway. From the sounds of it, it is not going to be an issue for me personally. Being an MVP I use my Live ID for more than just my PC logon. It's tied to the services etc I get from Microsoft as an MVP. For me it would really complicate things if I went out of my way to try and avoid using it. On the plus side it greatly simplifies things on a reinstall as a lot of my custom settings and configurations are restored in the background via the sync function. All I can say is it works very well for me. As always YMMV.

I use the same userid and password on all my home computers, Vista, Win 7 and Win 8. I also share everything between all of them. Having to use a different userid for Win 9 would make sharing more difficult I believe so I would have to find a way around that.

I like the idea of sync keeping customization and settings for easy reinstall but I don't do that very often so that is not much of an incentive.

Ztruker, post: 33905, member: 325 said:

I use the same userid and password on all my home computers, Vista, Win 7 and Win 8. I also share everything between all of them. Having to use a different userid for Win 9 would make sharing more difficult I believe so I would have to find a way around that.

I like the idea of sync keeping customization and settings for easy reinstall but I don't do that very often so that is not much of an incentive.

If I go to C:\Users my user folder is labeled Kerry, not kerry.****@nowhere.com. I had no problems sharing folders between 7 and 8 on my home network. It's been a while but I don't remember having to do anything special to get it all to work.

One nice feature of the sync function is if I bookmark a site on one PC it gets added to my favorites on my other PC's. This time of year I'm back and forth between my laptop and my desktop. I may even log in on my wife's laptop now and then.

Can you have a local and MS account on the same computer? I'd like to play with it but not if it's going to cause me any grief.

Ztruker, post: 33908, member: 325 said:

Can you have a local and MS account on the same computer? I'd like to play with it but not if it's going to cause me any grief.

I think so, you can switch from one to the other, and back again, so having one of each shouldn't be an issue. I haven't tried it myself on Windows 8.1 though.