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MS gives Win98 SE update away for free – in the UK

Hilarity this side of the pond, as MS US continues to charge $19.95

If you thought Microsoft's Windows 98 SE upgrade strategy couldn't get any more complicated, you were wrong - Microsoft UK is giving it away free. This simplifies matters immensely for users who'd been puzzling over whether to download the free go-fasters or free service pack (as and when you can download that one) or splash out on the SE upgrade CD. Well it simplifies it in the UK anyway, but in a reversal of the usual situation, US users are still being charged $19.95 for the SE update for Windows 98. Microsoft UK's generous offer is available here, and simply requires you to fill in a form and fax it off together with your receipt from your original copy of Windows 98. Presumably, as the bulk of copies of Windows 98 shipped with new PCs rather than separately, the receipt for the whole PC will be acceptable. This isn't however going to be a particularly easy one for Microsoft UK to police; you can see why the company is so keen on getting all its users registered, and how little further forward it will have got by acquiring a large pile of copies of Win98 receipts. But why is MS UK giving it away in the first place? Well, if you reckon that connection sharing is probably the main attraction for going for SE rather than just the service pack, and you calculate how many homes in the UK are likely to want to run multiple sessions over a single ADSL connection... ®

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