If you need a license key just to install a copy of windows, why don't they allow a download of a windows CD image off of thier site and burn it too ISO?

The only utilities that they would be giving away would be a disk partitioner and disk formatter. I'm sure you can find a freeware version of software like this so why is it that Windows will not put their CD images up on the site for people who loose or scratch their CD's.

That does make sense and is a good idea.

I suppose the reason that they don't do it is they might lose some money not having to make the CDs all the time.

Thats understandable.

But when you buy they disk your really only paying for the license, they could copy files all day and they would actually be gaining money because they don't have to cover the manufacturing cost of as many discs.

They probably have a supplier that makes the disks at virtually nothing.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to have DSL, and downloading a complete version of Windows would be a nightmare at under 56kps. But one would think that eventually, MS will provide that option.
Cheers,
John

Would be useful.

Lord knows with how good I am at keeping track of CD's id be downloading copies all the time.

I'm the same, couple of weeks ago I decided to install a game... only found the CD yesterday

Ubuntu and almost every other version of linux supplies there OS this way. However, Linux is free. But I could see this as a potential future for Microsoft. They would definitely have to beef up it's "genuine" program before continuing any such effort.

Yeah when I had dial up it took me 22 hours to download 350mb. One month I downloaded over 4gb on dial up besides browsing.