Today at work, I took delivery of a shiny new Dell Mac mini Studio Hybrid. I booted it up, and was confronted with this:
That’s nice, isn’t it? I’m accused of being a criminal before I’ve even started using the thing. Amazing!
So I clicked “Go online and resolve now”, which took me to this message:
I’m not surprised it was invalid. I haven’t typed anything yet – it’s not given me the option!¬¨‚Ć I tried typing a “different” product key, which I did manage to mess up with a typo. So Windows told me I was a pirate again:
Tch. I tried to activate Windows again, and typed the correct product key this time. Hurrah! It activated!  I thought, anyway. It thanked me for activating and told me I was now using a genuine copy of Vista. Only, of course, the message above was still there. Boggle at this:
Absolutely astounding, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Here’s a bonus Vista picture from the same machine today, showing how overused the word “Update” is on Vista machines:
