What is being got away with is the ability to render OS useless after a period of time. Its like buying a car & saying once the warranty expires, you are going to have to buy a new one as there will be no spare parts made.

That's exactly what's being done. We all know that the hardware development curve goes ahead in leaps and bounds, but over in software world the likes of Microsoft et al have hundreds (if not thousands) of coders who have nothing to do if they aren't re-inventing the wheel constantly to render the last major application version obsolete and incompatible.

No wonder big businesses prefer Unix and its relatives.

From XP onwards, the OS worked out what machine it was on and would only work once it was registered to Microsoft. If you tried installing to another machine, or moving the existing hard drive to another machine, XP would want to be registered again within 30 days. All windows since then act the same. There's a hack you can do to keep renewing the 30 day limit, but you still can't get any updates until it's properly registered.

Microsoft say it's to stop piracy, but I suspect the real reason is to kill off old OS's, since you wouldn't be able to register after support has ended. It's another way to get rid of perfectly-working software and force you to pay again to "upgrade" to the latest and greatest.

Vista is particularly vicious, if your old hardware breaks down and you move the drive to another machine, it goes to a locked-down mode where you get exactly 1 go to register or it dies forever. You can only register if the machine already has IE9, if you didn't then bad luck, because it won't let you install anything. Well done Microsoft.

I think the future direction is for Microsoft / Apple / whoever to maintain control of your computer, they decide what you can run on it, and the computer gives feedback to them of everything you do. Big brother.

It is actually inexplicable as to why the basic OS cannot be on the motherboard and not a HDD

It can be and sometimes is. Both Windows and Linux can be embedded on a chip and run totally solid state and this has been around for a long time. Windows CE kicked it off back in the 1990s. HP made laptops with 10 inch screens and these had Windows CE on them. The first Windows smart phones also ran Windows CE.

Point of Sale terminals run anything from XP to 10 in the same way (independent of an SSD)

It's no more or less stable than using an SSD or HDD. It's just a little simpler.

Vista is particularly vicious, if your old hardware breaks down and you move the drive to another machine, it goes to a locked-down mode where you get exactly 1 go to register or it dies forever. You can only register if the machine already has IE9, if you didn't then bad luck, because it won't let you install anything. Well done Microsoft.

Close but not quite. If your computer is a small form-factor and everything is on the motherboard then yep, ya stuck. If you have a big tower with a big motherboard and everything else in the PCI slots - video card, sound card, network card and the processors are removable - you should be able to put all that on a replacement motherboard and still have Windows working. Windows uses the serial numbers from all these bits and pieces, and the motherboard and disc drive, to create a buggery number which then is recorded at MS during the activation process. To allow anything that stuffs up to be replaced, this number is allowed to change a little bit but not a lot, meaning that you can replace one or two items but not simply shift the disc to a completely new machine. The MS website has more details on this.

Back in the early 1990s when I started to use DOS and Windows everything was pirated. There was no activation mechanism and registration wasn't compulsory either. I guess, up to a point, the activation process which a lot of software vendors utilise now, has helped with reducing piracy but it'll never stop it entirely. I'm told that legit Windows 10 CD keys are available on Ebay for as little as $20.00 and when punched in the activation does work. A mate of mine tried this. I can't be bothered with it these days though and just buy a proper licence when it's needed.

I think the future direction is for Microsoft / Apple / whoever to maintain control of your computer,

Yep. Google's master plan is exactly that.

Which is why I don't use MS Office. Open Office is a free download, and if you got used to the earlier Office and now hate the ribbon and the requirement to pay for M$ Office every year, you will LOVE Open Office.

As well as being fully compatible with MS Office file formats (better than different versions of MS Office anyway) it can export to PDF and does an excellent job of this. The Draw functions are excellent and not broken like the MS office ones are, to try to get you to pay for Vizio I guess.

Calc, the Excel equivalent, has all the advanced engineering and base conversion maths functions built-in that you have to pay extra for with MS.

And it's available for Linux. It's leaner and faster than MS Office so it runs well on old machines.

I will NEVER go back!

Ian,

I want to give Open Office a go.

Can I download it while MS Office is still in my PC or will there be a civil war?

I recall from bitter experience that MS does not tolerate rivals.

I need Ecxel to process raw data from my logger, so I am reluctant to remove MS Office until I see if a smooth transition from MS to Open is possible.

If the two can coexist I can leave old processed data in Ecxel and perform all future work in Calc. Wishful thinking???

Better still, can I transfer files from Ecxel to Calc?

I had both installed quite a long time ago with no issues. I stuck with Office mainly due to it being on my work machine and I don't want to use two environments. If you aren't as hard to please as I am then there's no reason why Open Office wouldn't suit one's needs.

Okay, thanks Brad,

I will download it now.

The only trick is file associations. You may have to select which suite will open .docx and .xlsx files by default.

I'm another Open Office fan, all the software to run my radio auction was done in OO, cataloguing, slide show presentation, all the financial things including invoicing, PDF catalogues, the works.

Harold

This site runs well with Linux/Chrome (just for the record.)

Regarding mixed environments, I am a bit of a loner in my office so I have to work with M$ Office files all the time.

Calc and Excel work well together, OO will open xlsx files just fine, but saves them in xls with still works OK for the others. The only compatability issues I've ever had is when I use advanced functions that aren't supported in the standard Excel. But that's OK, the other engineer runs OO on his Mac so no problems.

With OO Writer, you can double-click any draw object and type text into it directly. This isn't supported by Word, so if the file has to be opened by Word I just place text object(s) over the drawing and that works fine. I use a lot of Draw objects in manuals and technical documentation. The OO filled polyline function is great, SO much easier than Word.

Other than text in objects, no problems.

I think Word like most MS systems is clunky. We had a Unix based system replaced (time thing) with another and at that point in time it was capable, on something like a 686, of outperforming a MS based system on the first of the Pentiums. I used Word Perfect in the early days, as everything it did was faster than Word, its pull down menus did something & it used less resources.

I have downloaded OO on a windows computer. I think that blocking idea fell foul & proved expensive: We now have rental based programs & obsolescence to make up for the cash shortfall: Aka known as "cutting your own throat" as you provide others with more interest in customer service, their niche.

Minor victory: This is being posted from my new Win 7 machine.

Have spent all day migrating files from the old XP Pro machine to the new Windows 7 machine via USB link thanks to the alleged backup package named Memeo being useless for restore (see post #1).

Talk about drudgery! How anyone can repair and build PC systems for a living beats me. I reckon they must be masochistic by nature.

I didn't want to merely copy disc to disc as there's stuff on the old XP machine that I don't want on the new machine, and I have to deal with re-installing the applications that I still need to run in the 64-bit environment, and to do that I have to install Microsoft's XP Mode simulation utility. I'll look into that tomorrow.

I still have to figure out what screen resolution works best for this site so that a page fits properly on my monitor screen.