Yesterday a Dashboard Update was released for the Xbox 360. The console now supports more file formats (i.e. Divx and Xvid) via sharing from a Windows PC.
I have a history dating back to Vista’s release of problems getting my Xbox 360 to play nice with my Dell, running Vista. However, when I installed Vista on my MacBook under Boot Camp, everything worked.
To my chagrin — but not my surprise — the Dell couldn’t even see the 360 on my network. Insistent on trying out the new features, I threw away 19 days of uptime and rebooted my MacBook into Windows.
After typing in my Windows password, I got my first surprise of the night — Windows telling me that my copy of Vista is not genuine. It offered to let me type in the product key. It didn’t work, so I even tried the product key for the Dell’s copy of Vista. No dice. Ever so kind in a black desktop, no taskbar, no Start Menu sort of way, Windows allowed me to search the Microsoft Knowledge Base for help. It turned up nothing in the 90 or so seconds I was willing to give it. I called the 1-800 number. Closed; outside normal business hours.
I decided to boot back into Mac OS X.
I opened up Firefox and jumped into Gmail, and the Web Clip at the top linked to an Engadget article about the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player’s new price drop. I clicked on it and saw a related headline: Vista SP1 kills the WGA kill switch. I even clicked on the link to press release — just to get the story directly from the horse’s mouth. Turns out, when Microsoft updates Vista to Service Pack 1, “Users whose systems are identified as counterfeit … won’t lose access to functionality or features.”
Too bad I just deleted my Windows partition.
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