Robert_Charlton - 12:33 am on Jan 28, 2005 (gmt 0)

You have to register to receive any other warranty service.

You generally don't have to give them information, though, that you'd only give to your bank.

As I remember, when I went to register my legal copy of XP, they tried to hook me into a Passport account and asked for information that, at the time, I thought wasn't their business to know. Clearly, I'll have to reconsider this now.

But let's not think that this is just registering for a warranty. MS does have a larger agenda.

Though I don't like Microsoft's pricing or their operating system, and I resent that I'm currently dependent upon it, I'm at the same time sympathetic to the piracy issue.