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Microsoft Longhorn pirated and sold in Asia

Daniel Fleshbourne   on 02 December 2003 - 08:39 · 30 comments & 2886 views

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SOFTWARE PIRATES have made an early beta copy of Microsoft Longhorn available on CD, but it's years before the OS will be released. The Longhorn alpha is a pirated version of the edition distributed to programmers in October, and Reuters describes a Voleperson saying that installing the software on a PC as rather risky.

The Longhorn OS, which according to chief software architect Bill Gates recently, will cost as much as it cost for the US to put a man on the moon, is unlikely to appear before 2005. But the OS is being sold for around £1 or so in the bazaars of the Far East, where supply of illegal software is a way of life.

Despite Longhorn being a long way off, there is a lot of interest in the OS, so despite the piracy it may rebound to Microsoft's benefit because of the extra publicity.

News source: The Inq

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#1 vetToxicfume on 02 Dec 2003 - 15:57
What I am more afraid of is the fact that now such testing versions of an unreleased operating system has been exposed to the public, and many computer illiterate people will be carelessly installing them(which they shouldn't in the first place) and possibly messing up their computers then complaining how microsoft sucks. And this isn't a rare case either, trust me.. I've witnessed such a thing first hand.

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