Do I still need serial numbers?
Published on 19th November 2007 Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutesMy spot of bad luck with Windows in August highlighted the importance of hanging on to serial numbers for software that I had purchased over the internet and downloaded. Though I could get at the ones that I needed, they were retained in a motley mix of text files and emails; one even was rediscovered by pottering back to the website of the purveyor. While the security of the installation files themselves was another matter of some concern, I was rather more organised in that regard. Both of these are things that need checking before Windows falls to pieces on you and needs to be reinstalled. Of course, human nature, being what it is, means that we often find ourselves picking up the pieces after a calamity has struck when a spot of planning would have made things that bit easier.
Linux does make life easier on this front: commercial applications are anything but the dominant force that they are in the world of Windows. That means that serial numbers are few and far between, and I only need the one for VMware Workstation. The mention of VMware brings me to my retention of Windows, so knowing where serial numbers are located remains a good idea. Even so, I cloned my Windows VM so that any Windows restoration following a destructive crash should be a quicker affair. Now that I am a Linux user, Windows crashes should not encroach as much on my home computing any more and Linux should be more stable anyway...