[NOTE: This post was originally published April 7, 2007 @ 19:47 on my personal blog. It has been moved here to consolidate all my Apple-Related rants in one place.]
I will soon have to pack my Power Mac G5 away. For the first two weeks after we land, we’re staying in some kind strangers home until our cabin is ready.
The cabin is only accessible by golf cart.
…and by ready, I mean “has a toilet”. The bathtub is outside, which I guess is OK for spring and summer – but I will have to do something about it eventually, but I think a new fuse box is top priority.
It will be a while before I unbox the Mac.
A good friend was kind enough to give me an old Dell Inspiron 8200. The hard drive is blank, but it has a Windows XP Professional license and product key on a sticker on the back. How handy.
Unfortunately, when I tried any of the XP Pro installation disks we had laying around, it said that it was an invalid code, or a stolen code, and I should contact Microsoft immediately to buy another one.
No thank you.
I checked Dell’s website for disc image downloads. I figured it couldn’t hurt. No dice.
I have an old dusty copy of XP Home that was a gift from my mother-in-law in 2002. I was a beta tester for XP and had been running one version or another of Pro for two years by then, so I just smiled, said thank you, put it in the filing cabinet and forgot about it.
Feeling justified in my pack-rattery, I pulled it out tonight and my hard drive is reformatting now.
After five years, it’s about time I used that license.
In three weeks, this Dell becomes my only contact with the outside world for the foreseeable future. I hope I can get it ready in time.
