tl;dr I grew up in India where the Indian Rupee was quite weak compared to the USD. Most people I knew couldn't really afford a legitimate copy of Windows XP - 1 USD was about 48.61 INR in 2002, and average wage was about 120 INR/day[0]. At that price a copy of Windows XP (priced at around $300/$400 ~ INR 14,000) was prohibitively expensive for pretty much everyone I knew. Because of that we ended up using leaked keys to setup new PCs, I did that enough times for my family, friends, and classmates that now I can type that key up as if I'm typing "hello world" :)
Comments
Is there something magic about that code?
Yes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume_licensing#Leaked_keys
tl;dr I grew up in India where the Indian Rupee was quite weak compared to the USD. Most people I knew couldn't really afford a legitimate copy of Windows XP - 1 USD was about 48.61 INR in 2002, and average wage was about 120 INR/day[0]. At that price a copy of Windows XP (priced at around $300/$400 ~ INR 14,000) was prohibitively expensive for pretty much everyone I knew. Because of that we ended up using leaked keys to setup new PCs, I did that enough times for my family, friends, and classmates that now I can type that key up as if I'm typing "hello world" :)
[0] https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---asia/---ro-bangk...
It’s the most popular Windows 98 cd key back in the old days.