Having a free promotional disk and not being able to use it, thanks to a registration deadline that they never bothered to tell you about!!

I decided I wanted to try dual booting my computer again, just so that I could use a few programs that I cannot use on Wine all that well.  You know, like games or programs that have at least one obnoxious glitch that can be fix by running it natively on windows.  I found this disk that my Dad got, which is Windows Vista Ultimate.  Yes, Windows Vista isn't all that good of an operating system, in fact, it can be quite horrible, but at least I would still have my linux partition.  And when I used the disk, I realized that the number on the package that I got was to register for a product key, not the damn product key itself.  The bad news?  The webpage no longer exists!  I look around on google for the page, and it turns out that I lost my chance four years ago!  If that weren't bad enough, the other bits of software gotten as promotional kits had product keys on themselves!  It didn't require that I pull one from the internet with some PIN!  Is Microsoft really all that overprotective over their Operating Systems, but not their other software?  Just put the damn Product Key on the packaging!  Not on a webpage that will expire!  

See, that's another thing.  As a college student, I get free software from Microsoft.  I'm so used to downloading free software or software from steam that I forget to get the Product Key before it's too late.  I downloaded an ISO for Windows 7, "just in case", and by the time I wanted to install it again, it was too late to retrieve the product key!  They even offered to charge me about 10-15 bucks to get it again, which seems like a good deal, right?  Too bad I had no money at the time!  Damn, why couldn't campus just offer a copy of the software to those with ID cards, all neat in the packaging, where there is little to no risk of losing the Product key because of some stingy website that will only let you retrieve it in a short time?  Or better yet, why not do away with them completely?  Pirate, shmirate!  Why not sell software like Microsoft Office Suite, etc, and offer the most important ones for free?  Like an OS that actually lets you use the computer in the first place?!

Product keys are bull$#@!