A funny thing happened to me while in Florida...
So I was talking to a group of System Builders while presenting at a road show in Florida. One of the System Builders in the audience made a comment that he was annoyed that every time someone came in with a machine that needed the OS reinstalled, he had to call to have it activated. That struck me as a little odd so I asked a couple qualifying questions and found out that these were typically machines made by Dell, HP, etc. I asked if he was using the reinstall disk that came with the computer and he indicated to me that no he was using a copy he had on hand and using the COA number on the side to activate it. I took the opportunity to inform him that what he was doing violated the System Builder license.
Well I am pretty sure you could see the explosion from space. Needless to say this was not only a revelation to many of the partners in the room but it was also cause for great consternation and anger. Well the fact is, it's a tough situation. A customer comes in and just wants their machine fixed and they are looking to you to do it. In order to be fully license compliant, however, you have to use the restore disk that came with the system. Now I understand that often times these computers don't come with restore disks but with images on the hard disk that can be used to create recovery media. The problem is that often times the consumer chooses not to be diligent in storing their installation CD's and various backups of their software. So you want to help out the customer but you also don't want to do something that violates the OEM license. I am wondering if anyone has any ideas on how we can make this situation better for both the System Builder and the consumer.
Comments
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removedAnonymous
January 01, 2003
I should add that, to Microsoft's major credit, the EULAs are in fact getting shorter. The IE7 EULA is an awesome example: Two paragraphs. One, English. The other, French.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
just a note to all dell and the rest of them need to supply a disk with the system on it a customer came in and asked me to burn his copy from the restore section on the disk he sent the system back for one reason he paid for a 80 gig and the restore system on his drive a made it smaller then he wanted so watch for the legal end to start over the way they do the systems that are sold have fun with that oneAnonymous
January 01, 2003
"...often times the consumer chooses not to be diligent in storing their installation CD's and various backups of their software..." Brett, I work in the field, and I can tell you that customer diligence in this department does not exist. There is no such thing. Another myth that Microsoft can forget about is the end-user reading an end-user license agreement. If you observe an EU scrolling down a EULA, there's an easy explanation: the tech is looking over their shoulder. They might even ask "what is this?" to see if the technician has read the EULA and remembers any of what s/he read. Many of my lawyer clients change the radio button from "I disagree" to "I agree" and then "next" their way through EULAs like nobody's business. I wonder if they even once read one of those EULAs, onerous as they may be. I don't know what the legal implications are for assuming that the "I agree" radio button is tantamount to having read the agreement, but I doubt anyone will take that notion seriously until these EULAs are seriously simplified. I'm Ron Burgundy, thanks for watching Channel 4 News.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
http://blogs.technet.com/backroom/archive/2006/11/01/a-funny-thing-happened-to-me-while-in-florida.aspxAnonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removed