Windows 7 expiration stupidity
So some people are freaking out over the Win 7 RC expiration. On March 1st, Windows 7 RC will start shutting down every 2 hours. 2 weeks before that, there will be a warning to that effect. On June 1st, it will expire completely
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I am happily surprised at this 1 year free demo thing, but that mechanism just seems like it is designed to annoy people.
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1) As software developers, basically the worst thing you can do is destroy a user's work.
2) Popup messages can be dismissed easily and many users are used to doing so.
They are absolutely trying to avoid a situation where a user is locked out of their computer. When the taskbar notifications don't work, they escalate the annoyance to the 2-hour reboots to make certain that the user exits the RC on his own terms, rather than with a hard lockdown.
A lot of people will take the stance that "if they are too stupid to ignore the popup warnings, they deserve to lose all their data." But punishing users with data loss is just a juvenile move just leads to pissed off customers.
The bottom line is you have two choices:
A) After some reminders, on X date, the OS deactivates and you can't use it anymore.
B) After some reminders, on X date, you get a grace period where your computer reboots every two hours. 3 months later, the OS deactivates.
You think A is better? Really?
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It's not a 1 year free demo. Anyone (Microsoft or not) representing it as one is the one making the error. Perhaps Microsoft should have decided to make it a "1 year free demo thing", with 3 months of 2-hour reboots afterward? Maybe, who knows.
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