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I'm considering the purchase of a 2011 13" Macbook Pro, and have been scouring ebay for deals.
2 questions:
1. How do so many sellers get away with including the Adobe CS6 suite and/or Office 2011 preinstalled (no install media included)? Seems that over half of them advertise this on their auctions. Obviously, this is against ebay policies and is software piracy, but it still seems to persist.
2. How do so many sellers get away with including an install of OS 10.8 on these computers? They shipped with either 10.6 or 10.7 originally, and the 10.8 will go away the next time people erase the drive. I guess people just don't understand that the 10.8 install is connected with their app store account.
anyway, that is all.
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I might be wrong but, I think once 10.8 is installed on a Mac, it stays installed, even if the users are changed.
As for the Adobe software and eBay. If Adobe (or anyone else) challenges the listing, eBay's default action is to delete the listing. Perhaps Adobe feels that if they can "hook" you, they'll get your money when the next major update is released. Hasn't Adobe moved to a subscription service for their latest software? If that's the case, when you connect online, you're likely to see a bill before you're allowed to continue. If you can use the loaded software without having to contact Adobe, you might be OK.
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It's probably so small fry that it's not worth it for them to dedicate the time going after such people....
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testcase wrote:
I might be wrong but, I think once 10.8 is installed on a Mac, it stays installed, even if the users are changed.
I might be wrong, too, I don't know for sure. I just recalled that a computer that I purchased that came with 10.8 installed lost it when I booted into recovery mode to wipe it clean and install a fresh copy of the OS. In that case, 10.7 was installed from the recovery partition, as it was the default OS that shipped with the machine.
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I thought at one time there was a policy or at lease talking point of not including software on computers for sale because some people were loading the computer with all kinds of serial number software. I think they originally listed the software in the ad and after the talk just didn't list what was on the computer.
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10.8 is $20, and you can often find iTunes gift cards on sales for 20% OFF, so really the 10.8 costs you only $16. Not something to worry about if you have to re-buy it to make sure you are 100% legal.
as for Microsoft and Adobe, there are some good alternatives out there (Open Office, New Office, LibreOffice, iWork, Pixelmator, GIMP, etc) and these are either free or low cost, that really no one should be paying money to either of these companies.
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space-time wrote:
10.8 is $20, and you can often find iTunes gift cards on sales for 20% OFF, so really the 10.8 costs you only $16. Not something to worry about if you have to re-buy it to make sure you are 100% legal.
Yeah, I don't have a problem buying my own copy of 10.8 (already have, BTW), but I just don't think it's good form for sellers to advertise it as something they can provide, when I believe they can't really do that because of App Store licensing restrictions. It would be just like in the old days of CD-based OSes saying..."computer comes installed with 10.5, but the original software on CD is mac OS 10.4." If their drive ever dies, the buyer would have to buy 10.5 anyway in order to reinstall, so why is it even part of the equation from the seller? Sure, the 10.8 install probably works just fine for the buyer, but when they have an issue, they'll want to be able to reinstall it.
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I bought an iMac several months ago with Mountain Lion Server installed. I installed it from the existing iMac HD to an SSD I installed using an installer the seller had stored in the application folder on the HD. Then I ran Migration Assistant to move the rest of the applications and, next, data and apps from my non-ML iMac. Now ML updates fine through the App Store but I would need the seller's password to update any other software she had installed.
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It's probably so small fry that it's not worth it for them to dedicate the time going after such people....
I wonder if that includes people flagged by others who report what the ne'er do wells are up to.
Obviously they can't vet every single auction, but I wonder what effort, if any, they devote to software piracy. There have been reports of ebay acting on tips and canceling auctions.
That's as much as I'd expect them to do, in terms of "going after".
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