I never thought that I would use phone activation/registration of any software product, especially Windows. But it happened. Firstly I was kindly asked to assist in choosing new PC for parents of my wife. There weren’t any special requirements, so I decided to buy it in one of the local computer stores rather than assemble it from components. We did short ride in some shops, and chose one model which seemed perfect as home PC (1.8 Core Duo, 1G RAM, 200G HDD, ASUS motherboard).
There was special discount - if you buy it with pre-installed Windows XP it becomes even cheaper than without OS. When we purchased and delivered it to home I have to enter license code printed on the recovery disk. It was usual and easy process. But then, I was asked to activate it, and encountered a problem - parents don’t have an Internet access yet. Hmm. I had to make a choice: to be asked “what’s wrong with that damn PC? it always asks something unclear..” or pass activation by phone to eliminate this irritating pop-up. Actually I had no choice, and started to call the number which appeared in the activation wizard. Frankly speaking I expected that I wouldn’t be answered because of Sunday, or I will talk to sleepy assistant. To my great surprise, I was greeted by answering machine, or rather voice-automate like every mobile operator or cinema have. The voice was charming and welcoming but then I realized that I had to type in my phone 9 groups of 6 digits generated by wizard (54 in total) :( Moreover, after this operation, I had to type the answer which was shorter but also too long. To get to this part I had to listen all rules and repeat actions correctly.
After I successfully activated the Windows, I was asked by robot to answer some questions about quality of phone activation, I answered only on first three questions (did anybody reach the last?). I chose variants that I passed from first time but I didn’t like that boring procedure. Next questions seemed as boring as the whole process, so I dropped the line.
I can’t say that the process was bad, but I still feel that I wasted 20 minutes of time.
I think that there is only one way to improve activation by phone - just remove that process at all. I don’t understant why should a customer activate the product if it was bought with licensed CD/DVD with printed secure label with license code. Anyway, this measures don’t work against pirated disks, because they already ships with well cracked $oft\/\/are.
Or, as an option, it can be activated in the shop where it was installed. For somebody the best is to use open software like Ubuntu :)