This morning Dan‘s mailbox was graced with some shitty Microsoft newsletter which named and shamed 21 companies busted for selling computers with dodgy copies of their software. It’s surprising to see how many of these are from ‘up North’ (Bolton, Manchester, Oldham and so on), and just out of curiosity I did a quick Google search for one of the offenders – 1Hr Computing, in Manchester – whereby I came across this Microsoft press release.
There’s some pretty choice quotes in there, such as this one:
Mr Murphy from 1Hr Computers said, “We recognise that we weren’t installing Microsoft software correctly, and that’s something we take seriously.”
Yeah, installing Windows Vista from a copy you downloaded via The Pirate Bay is probably a pretty fucking obvious clue that “ur doing it wrong“. It gets worse towards the end, where it sounds as if they’ve been brainwashed following a visit from Microsoft’s “licensing specialists”.:
After two face-to-face visits from Microsoft licensing specialists, I now look at their products in terms of how they can help me drive revenue, for example using Office Ready PC3.
It’s almost as if these guys were sent off to Microsoft’s equivalent of the `Ministry of Love’ for a little bit of `correction’.