(WAY!) Off-topic

[FoulDragon at aol.com]

In a message dated 10/25/2005 7:46:47 PM US Mountain Standard Time, 
craigwhite at azapple.com writes:
>If the system were purchased from a normal
>vendor, the install codes for that machine would be on the certificate
>affixed to the computer itself.

Sorry, thanks for playing.

Stick-on certificates didn't show up til like the year 2000.  I've seen them 
in 98SE flavours, but it's entirely possible you'd not have one on a 98SE box.

The copy of Win98SE I bought at Fry's in 1999 had the certificate as the 
front page of the manual.  It was an OEM copy, presumably the most likely sort to 
be packaged with a certificate you'd permanently bind to a case.

The copy of Win95 that came with my P100 had a free-floating CoA which 
promptly got lost when I wanted to reinstall it.

And a stick-on certificate is monumentally stupid.  If you change the case, 
it disappears.  The machines in at least one of the labs at ASU (2nd floor GWC 
east side) had the stickers defaced to unreadability and-or peeled off by 
fidgety students, so they're obviously not impervious.  If you spend hundreds of 
dollars extra for a premium case and paint job (ie Falcon Northwest or Voodoo), 
you don't want an ugly sticker on it.

Why oh why can't they just do a #(%# USB dongle or something similar?  It's 
keygen-proof, it's transferrable between systems or through upgrades, and we 
all have 900 extra USB ports we don't need anymore.