That's "Playground" in the photo upper right of the screenshot.
I have a computer (I have many computers) that I use for just experimenting and trying new programs. It has a network name of “playground”. That should tell you something. I use it with my ham radio right now so it is not a critical machine. I have written about it before in this blog and have described the special small keyboard I bought to go with it.
I had a SUSE Linux OS installed on it when I first made it operational. I have always enjoyed “playing” around with the free software available in Linux. (Now you know the reason for the name.)
When I bought the full Windows 7 OS, I thought it wise to first try it out on the “Playground”. It was the full price legal version. What I did though, was go on Ebay and found several dudes selling discounted license keys. At one point they were as low as $10.00 but I think I paid about $30 for mine.
I did the full install of Windows 7 and used the discount key. The install went perfectly and the Windows registration also went fine. Windows 7 has been running perfectly and doing the normal updates and confirmations as “authentic” software for almost a year.
Yesterday, after one of the usual updates, the OS suddenly reported itself as a non-authentic version of the software. It didn’t shut down but reported that I could no longer obtain updates and that I need (for $200) to update my product key.
I suspect my “Ebay Dude” has sold multiple copies of the Key and MS was just now able to sort it out. I always thought it was too good to be true. Of course I am not going to spend the $200 on the “Playground” OS. I just loaded Fedora 13 Linux and am using the Free OpenOffice.org to write this text.
OpenOffice.org is what I had and was using in Windows 7 so really there is no change in how I use the machine. Sorry MS, I do run a legal copy on my main business computer but I don’t need it on my hobby machine. I have taken off my pirate hat and patch.
I am not upset at all. When something is too good to be true it usually is. I am amazed it took so long.