Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!uxc!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!mcdurb!aglew
From: aglew@mcdurb.Urbana.Gould.COM
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: built-in security features
Message-ID: <28200265@mcdurb>
Date: 2 Feb 89 17:07:00 GMT
References: <8846@nsc.nsc.com>
Lines: 31
Nf-ID: #R:nsc.nsc.com:8846:mcdurb:28200265:000:1643
Nf-From: mcdurb.Urbana.Gould.COM!aglew    Feb  2 11:07:00 1989


>We generally do not inform the customer that there is any copy protection
>being used.  However, we do STRONGLY advise them that they should contact
>us, along with their AT&T service personnel whenever they experience a
>hardware problem which may involve the exchange of the motherboard.
>Under such circumstances, their are simple procedures in place which will
>allow the software to be 're-installed' on a machine which has had the 
>motherboard replaced.
>
>Philip A. Gross			   |INTERNET:	pag%tcsc3b2@wb3ffv.ampr.org
>The Computer Solution Co., Inc.    |USENET:	...!wb3ffv!tcsc3b2!pag

Well, let's see... back when I was an undergrad I worked on IBM PCs
that had more than a dozen purchased software packages installed
- starting off with DOS, going through FORTRAN, LATTICE C, various 
mathematical subroutine libraries, HALO graph, and ending up with the
little things like Sidekick.

These were *not* all purchased at the same store. No store in town
sold all of these - mant *had* to be purchased separately.

Now, then, if, every time one of the lab PCs died, I had had to call each
of these vendors separately - conservatively estimating 2 hours on the phone
to each vendors customer service, plus maybe an hour of reinstallation
- gee, that's 36 hours, almost a full week, just reinstalling software
after a board swap. That's almost as long as the mean time to failure
of one of the lab systems (not a single system, mind you, just time to
failure of any one of multiple systems).

Well, I guess that gives you an argument for buying all of your software
at one place (preferably *your* place). But that's not always possible.