StarDestroyer.Net BBS

My apologies if this has been posted, but a search didn't turn up anything.

Microsoft now has a Live Search Club website where you can play casual games for tickets to redeem for prizes. The games include crossword puzzles, word finds, phrase matching games, anagram finding games, and more.

The ticket payouts range from 3 for the easiest game to 25 for Flexicon, which is usually pretty easy but can be challenging at times. It's the one I played to rack up all my points.

Prizes include music downloads, ringtones, headphones, PC and XBox/XBox360 games, XBox360 systems, Zunes, and copies of Vista Ultimate. I went with Vista, since I didn't feel like earning 20000 tickets for a Zune or 35000 for a 360. Getting 6000 for Vista was bad enough.

After a little fiasco where, as soon as I had racked up enough tickets for it, I found that Vista wasn't on the prize page anymore (as it turns out, they were just out of stock, but chose not to have the prize page reflect that), I now have a copy of Vista on the way. It should be here within 6-8 weeks. I wish it could get here sooner, but I really can't complain since both Vista and the shipping were free.

EDIT: Oh, and alas, it's for US residents only.

Free Vista? Maybe it's worth "buying" now
*Vanishes into the void of live.com*

US only. As usual. Le sigh.

Would be nice if the OP noted that.

Just get an american friend to ship it for you after getting them something from there

Resinence wrote:Just get an american friend to ship it for you after getting them something from there

Heard of import taxs?

Heard of 'not everyone lives in Israel'? Shipping software US-AU doesn't incur any taxes that I know of, and I've had many bits of software sent over in that way. If $10 shipping covers it, well... and it's not like you can't just throw it in a cd-shipping box and just not say it's Vista.

Clearly Res should just buy it in AU for 500 bucks, right?

Even then, don't even need it shipped at all. If I *hypothetically* already had a vista disk that I *hypothetically* obtained, I could use that to install with the CD-Key send over MSN/AIM etc.

Well, I didn't want to be the one to say it. Technically all you need is someone in America who can read the licence code.

Netko wrote:US only. As usual. Le sigh.

Would be nice if the OP noted that.

Sorry. I forgot about that part.

Resinence wrote:Even then, don't even need it shipped at all. If I *hypothetically* already had a vista disk that I *hypothetically* obtained, I could use that to install with the CD-Key send over MSN/AIM etc.

I'm pretty sure that's actually legal. I don't think Microsoft really cares what media you install off of so long as you have a valid license for the software you're installing.

Right, that might be OK, even a good option for Vista, but since I can get as many free Business licences as needed for computers I "own" through MSDNAA (within reason of course), Vista isn't really a compelling prize for me. A 360 or even a 360 gamepad, however, would be - and that is limited to the US because the shipping would be killer (think 100$+).

That, and the time you'd need to invest in order to get a 360 is immense. It took me around 20 hours of playing to get 6000 tickets.

Executor32 wrote:That, and the time you'd need to invest in order to get a 360 is immense. It took me around 20 hours of playing to get 6000 tickets.

Seeing as Vista Ultimate goes for $400, that's $20 an hour. Nice.

Actully, considering it's basically the CD key and it's now summer, yeah, that could work.

I heard one of my friends say there are exploits being devised for the Live Search games. Most of them involve some fancy mouse scriptery. One of them involves a memory debugger such that you always win the Chicktionary game after putting in just one word.

Well, it's certainly possible to get that many points in a single day legitimately, as it took me 20 hours (spread out over several days, though) to get 6000 of them. However, that person would have to spend the entire 24 hours doing nothing but play Flexicon and have no life whatsoever.

Oh, and speaking of cheating and Chicktionary, it's a helluva lot easier if you use an anagram generator on the letters you're given.

Speaking of cheating at Chicktionary, if you do so, you can average about 600 pts an hour.

A program like Tsearch can bring you closer to 6000 an hour.

Looks like someone at Microsoft took notice - the point caps on the puzzles have been lowered pretty sharply.

I doesn't look like it on my end. Flexicon, Chicktionary, and Clink still give me 25, 20, and 10, respectively.

Executor32 wrote:I doesn't look like it on my end. Flexicon, Chicktionary, and Clink still give me 25, 20, and 10, respectively.

Uraniun was referring to the maximum points earnable on a puzzle. For a while, you could earn 4000+ points at Chicktionary, but now it's capped at 1000. Crosswire used to be around 5000 points, but now is capped at just under 2000. Flexicon and Clink seem to be unaffected and retain their original caps, though. The problem with the lowered caps is that it's now impossible to earn either the Zune or the Xbox 360, as there aren't enough points across all of the games to trade in for them.

I'd say that's the real reason they lowered the caps, not the cheating.