I was just surfing the FSX demo directory and i found a file labeled Phone Activation.xml - if you open it up and look at it carefully you see a bunch of countries and the applicable phone number.Awww Man!

What's wrong with that?I'm sure they will give you the option of activating it over the internet first. For some people though, that's not possible so they use the phone as an alternate method. ( You call, you give them your Serial Number, they give you the code to type in, etc ).Just speculation but there's quite a few applications (Adobe comes to mind) that have this method.

Beats having to put in disk 4 every time, doesn't it?

No, product activation is more annoying than it may sound. Upgrading a few compenents on your machine triggers the PIRATE alarm and you have to call up Genishe or whatever and and reactivate.Besides, who still puts in Disk 4? I'm sure FSX will make you do that too, but people will find a way around it.

Not to mention if you wan't to install it on your laptop, upgrade your comp, etc. They may want you shell out another 70 quid. As always there will be a workaround in no time and we won't need to carry cd (DVD) 4 around.Regards, Carlos

Changing components on your machine doesn't necessarily trigger anything. It's a matter of how they programmed their own software.To answer your question, I still use Disk 4 because the 'crack' is 1) technically illegal and 2) causes problems within FS9.

>No, product activation is more annoying than it may sound.>Upgrading a few compenents on your machine triggers the PIRATE>alarm and you have to call up Genishe or whatever and and>reactivate.>>Besides, who still puts in Disk 4? I'm sure FSX will make you>do that too, but people will find a way around it.I do.Also, I do complete formats and reinstalls of my computers every couple of months, and everytime it takes about 5-10 minutes to call and reactivate all of my Windows XP installs. Of course, the first couple of times, I clicked a button and it happened automatically, but after that ran out, I just call them and tell them that I reinstalled, and bam, done. I've never had any problem with it.

FSX won't have a disc 4, it comes on 2 DVDs. :)I imagine activation will end up causing problems for at least some legit users though."Let me help you out. You're cleared to taxi any way you can to any runway you see."

Well, I've been going with product activation with WinXP for nearly 5 years now, and I have yet to have any problems with it. I've had to call twice to manually activate, and that was after making major hardware upgrades. I've made numerous minor upgrades and never had to call.If MS has to have some sort of copy protection, at least it's something that can't be overridden by a simple .exe download.Also, I believe that Tdragger has mentioned that we won't have to put any disk in to run FSX.

You're not going to have to buy a new copy if you upgrade your hardware. I've yet to see a program that requires that.However, nearly all software released specifies in the EULA that the software can be installed on one computer only, although some games do allow installation to a second computer provided that both copies will not be running at the same time. Product activation merely enforces this.

Anything is better than the Starforce copy protection scheme. If they use this copy protection I'll just scrap the DVDs.And yes. I do not use disk 4. Wait until the disk is scratched and you're begging for a new one. This happened to my wife with another game. The support didn't even bother to anwer. Solved the problem "my way". Alex

What he said, as I recall, is that we won't have to put a "CD" in the drive to run FSX. But FSX isn't comming on CDs, it's on DVDs. (Which is what I think he was hinting at.)"Let me help you out. You're cleared to taxi any way you can to any runway you see."

If you are worried about activation / copy protection - real simple - don't buy it for the first few weeks.Monitor the forums and see if people are having problems.One thing I'll be willing to bet though - you will have to have a legal copy of Windows XP with SP2 installed before the FSX install will run and activate.

>No, product activation is more annoying than it may sound.>Upgrading a few compenents on your machine triggers the PIRATE>alarm and you have to call up Genishe or whatever and and>reactivate.>>Besides, who still puts in Disk 4? I'm sure FSX will make you>do that too, but people will find a way around it.Uh, no, but have a nice day anyway. ;)

Contrary to what many may think based on my statements- My XP, office, and FS9 are all legit.Product activation can just be annoying when you have to reinstall XP- besides the MS tech support tells you to reload XP every time you contact them.Also, by pirate alarm it just thinks you swap the HDD into a PC. Sorry bout the confusion- but its just a hassle. And yes i do have the CD crack in place for FS 9.1.