It's really sad. Every time I go on craigslist.com, I always see some wanted ad for a computer with someone claiming to have bought a so called "Bargain" computer for like $80 that had windows xp and it didn't have a genuine license. I don't really blame some of the repair techs though. What they do is wrong, however if they don't do it, they'll just have to throw the computers away. For example: Just last week, I got a computer from a client for free. It had an 800mhz PIII processor, 128mb of ram, and a 10GB hard drive. I would estimate its value is around $80-$110 depending on other factors such as the included CD/DVD drives and such. Well, a windows xp license has dropped in price considerably, however it's still $100. Even if I upgraded the computer to have 512mb of ram it would cost me around $35 and increase the computers value by about $20. There's no way I can sell it for anything unless it has linux or windows 2000. Now if I just used a illegal cracked copy of xp, I could make up to $110, but if I used a genuine license, I would only make $10 and since it takes about 2 hrs to get a computer up to par to be sold, I would end up working for less than minimum wage. <_< Repair techs are stuck between a rock and a hard place so who pays the price??? The people who buy the computers usually pay the price. I mean, I can't sell this computer for anything. It's just sitting in my office taking up space. I could add it to my server, but that's a whole different story. Anyways, since Microsoft is making it's OS's so expensive, people are getting screwed in the end and that's wrong. Besides, if the OS's weren't freaking hundreds of dollars, no one would bother to crack them and Microsoft would make a lot more money. You'd think this company would get it, but I guess whoever is running it now is just too much of a dumb a$$ to see this.
: Bottom line: if you see a computer for sale with windows xp that's less than $100 or if it's like $140 and you know it's worth more than $40, be suspicious! The copy of XP that's on it is probably illegal! Not many people know this and that's why so many get screwed.
They get lured in by the low price of the computer and end up getting a computer they can't even use unless they spend $100 for a license and pay someone to install it. :angry:
I blame Microsoft. Their greed is boundless and it's only hurting the consumers. Repair techs don't take the fall for stuff like this. Most of them just sell the computers with illegal copies and hope the copy of xp on there lasts a couple of months so they can just say "too bad, so sad" to whoever they sold it to after they bring it back in. Realistically, I think there should be only one version of Vista and it should be around $30. Talk about ridiculous! If I wanted to sell a computer with Vista Ultimate, I would have to charge $259+ whatever I wanted for the computer and since only super computers can even run Vista, I would have to charge at least $250 for that computer. People would be better off buying a new one than getting one used. :mad Stupid Microsoft!
