What The Lol?

Oh, my God. I'm tempted just not to turn up to work for Microsoft on July 1st, and just to spend the year volunteering on some open source alternatives instead.

I just got around to activating this copy of Vista Business on my mother's laptop. It's the copy I used to use on my desktop, before I upgraded that to Ultimate. This, naturally, caused a bit of a problem, as the key had already been activated once.

Now, with XP, you'd just have to ring up a number, and a charming lady would give you the nice 8 digit code within about 20 seconds - great. Vista apparently, has a slightly different approach.

Step 1:
Phone a (thankfully) toll free number.

Step 2:
Enter in, and I'm not kidding, a 56 digit code from your screen, into your touch-tone phone.

Step 3:
Be told, oddly enough, that there's a problem. Which, by the way, is the whole reason you're ringing.

Step 4:
Be transferred within seconds to a very helpful operator. Read out your 56 digit code to him. Yes, seriously.

Step 5:
Wait.

Step 6:
Be asked a few basic questions to confirm you have a legitimate right to the product. Comparable with the American immigration form that contains such gems as; "Are you a petrol bomb toting terrorist with an Islamic sounding name who was a member of the Commumist party in 1974, and if so - do you plan to detonate your bomb at the White House at 3.34pm on January 17th, 2008?". Who is really going to say "It's installed on 18 computers" after entering 102 digits?

Step 7:
Enter in the code that the operator reads out to you. Can you guess how many digits?

Step 8:
Cry.