Fire will teach you to learn!

On Wednesday I ordered what I thought was a bargain on eBay. Some idiot had apparently paid £100 for about 40-50 fire-damaged copies of Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise, and he had apparently tested them all and was selling the working ones (just the DVDs with the serial numbers on them) for £40 each. Something in the back of my mind was nagging when I read this listing but the seller reassured me that his feedback was 100% positive, and lo and behold, it was. He also reassured me that if there was anything wrong with the product, he would refund me the money. I decided to take a chance as £40 for, what I thought to be a genuine copy of the latest version of Microsoft Office didn't seem bad, as I'm only using a trial at the moment. With this in mind, I decided to order a copy, and received an e-mail that he had posted it that evening. On Thursday, I received an e-mail from eBay saying that the listing had been removed, but that they weren't allowed to tell me why. I DEFINITELY smelled a rat, as genuine software generally does not breech eBay's selling terms and conditions, just so long as you uninstall all the copies from any equipment you own before you sell it. Anyhoo, it arrived this morning, and you can imagine my horror when a bootlegged copy fell out of the padded envelope. I was straight on the Internet e-mailing the seller, who had previously assured me that it was a genuine Microsoft copy that he was selling me. I asked him politely if I could send the software back and even offered to pay the return postage because it's only about 75p tops to send a CD through the mail in a padded envelope. I also sent a few pointers (that I should have really followed) to check whether the software is genuine without actually having to load it on your computer. He still hasn't e-mailed me back.

Here are the tips that you should follow to be able to tell whether a Windows or Office CD is genuine.

1. It really should be in a case with a genuine Certificate of Authenticity (COA). The COA should be partly shiny and there should at least be a line should partly change colour as you hold it up to the light in a different way..
   
2. The CD should be holographic with the word 'Genuine' appearing as you hold it up to the light in a certain way.
   
3. The serial number will almost never be on the disk. It will always be printed on the Certificate of Authenticity.
   

If you suspect that the copy of Windows installed on your PC isn't genuine, visit the Windows Genuine Advantage site to run a check on your PC. If it isn't genuine, then you will be given the option of buying a low-cost upgrade to a genuine version of Windows. Here you can also check whether your copy of Microsoft Office is genuine, if you have Office installed on your PC.

If any of my former AVCE ICT teachers are reading this then yes, I am now running genuine software as it is part of the Computer Science faculty's policy that they will like to nag at the wrongs of counterfeit software, plus it doesn't pay to have counterfeit software anymore as Microsoft just turns it into a piece of Nag ware.