Microsoft has obviously decided that the venerable philosophical conundrum of My Grandfather's Ax does not apply to Windows XP Home. Having upgraded my computer just one time too many, Windows refused to activate without being provided with a new Product Key, effectively saying that I must buy a new copy.

This crops up every now and again and the line from Microsoft is that a new motherboard and processor counts as a new computer. That's a shame for me as those are the only parts that I changed, all the hard disks, the graphics card and even the case are the same as before.

Of course, I could just go ahead and install PCLinuxOS and save myself the cost of Windows, but I had rather been hoping to play some games on the new computer.