[cesarb]

People also often forget that Windows XP was the first Windows to have WGA, which was fairly controversial. Windows 2000 was the last Windows version you could truly own, instead of having to beg Microsoft for permission every time you reinstalled or replaced hardware.

[johnebgd]

Windows XP volume licensing still gave customers full ownership without online activation.

I remember a friend used magic jelly bean to pull keys off every pc he came across to stockpile new volume keys he could use after the initial key that went public got banned for windows updates.

[lhoff]

I used to run around the big tech shops with my phone and took photos of the Windows Licence sticker (WinXP and later Win7) to have enough keys for my experiments.