New Laptop

I recently got a new laptop from ASUS. Not many people know about this manufacturer, but the machines they make are quite nice. The company I work for is a subsriber to this Microsoft partnership program. This means we pay ludicrously large amounts of annual fee in return for plastic coasters from Microsoft every couple of months. I found this out to be particularly true when I tried to install Windows XP Pro on it last night. The installation went perfectly until it asked for the product key. Even though I typed it in exactly as it was printed, the program refused to recognize the key.

I called up Microsoft and a customer service agent confirmed that the key was correct and promptly whisked me to technical support. After talking with technical support, he then promply whisked me back to costumer service, which then told me that because the key is valid (duh....) that they cannot help me and that only technical support can help me....

At this point, I am assuming the tech support agent had no clue what to do, as he asked for a "few minutes" to look it up (in other words, "I have no clue what to do and am hoping I can find some sucker to take this phone call off my back"). Apparently his search was frivolous and he came back on the line to tell me that it was because the CD was defective and that the only way to solve it was to get it sent back to Microsoft to get a replacement CD.

I just decided at this point to give up on Windows XP pro and instead, installed Windows XP Media edition.