You don't NEED to "pirate keys" on most Dell computers unless you are tryng to run a higher operating system than it was built for...
a Dell Built with XP (and version) will accept ANY Dell XP reinstallation disc and never ask you for a key and will activate automatically.
a Dell built for Vista will similarly accept any edition of Vista off of a DELL Reinstallation disc but will also accept Dell XP reinstalls.
Allegedly this works the same way with Dell machines built for Windows 7.
UPDATE: This DOES work for Dells that have Windows 7 as the OEM operating system.
Last week I reinstalled the OS on a Dell 1545 that originally came with windows 7 starter.
I took the time to "play with my various re-installation discs and discovered that
"OEM windows 7" enabled all versions of Windows 7 that I had available, both Home and Pro
I returned the computer with Home Premium 64-bit and they were thrilled.
IF you want to upgrade to a "Higher OS" XP-to-Vista Vista-win7 OR
if you want to see if an XP-toWin7 upgrade (Must be done Via Vista, but frankly a
clean Win7 install is easier) is possible you will need a code.
As for Linux, I recall reading recently that other than the 16% of computers
that run some variant of a MAC OS and the 80-odd percent of computers
running one of the various versions of Windows, Linux users (all of them combined) ammount to 3.something percent of all computer users.
It it my opinion that if Linux were so great more people would be using it.