Submitted by Microsoft is doing away with “reduced functionality mode” for individuals that its WGA activation and validation scheme deems to be running “non-genuine” software. The company also is plugging two WGA loopholes that pirates have been exploiting successfully.Microsoft is attributing the changes it is making to “feedback from customers and partners.”
Might be slightly off topic im not sure but is this what the recent WGA update on XP is about? they’re trying to break pirated copies?
Due to XP’s continued popularity, MS basically ran out of activation keys and had to update the activation mechanism to handle a new batch.
AFAIK, XP’s WGA mechanism still amounts to nagware, I don’t think MS has made any move to disable functionality.
The whole process doesn’t really make any sense.
1. They pay their developers to develop the activation process, lockouts, etc…
2. They pay their developers to continue to develop it to lock it down more and to fix any bugs that allowed for cracks to be made
3. They pay people to be available 24/7/365 to take a phone call for activation. Now when they ask you if it is only on one PC or if it is installed on other places who is going to say “oh yeah, I have it on like 6 machines”? 9/10 if it is installed on more than one then the person will just say it is installed on one and get their key to activate it.
There is a lot of time and money invested into this and it doesn’t really prevent anything.
It does however make it harder on customers, especially on repair techs to fix a PC for a customer who usually doesn’t have their Windows or restore CD or cd-key.
Abandon the whole thing and just let us relax already. There is probably more money spent than is saved from preventing multiple installs, not to mention customer frustration.
It also makes it frustrating for those of us that purchase HP laptops with Vista preinstalled and a COA sticker on the bottom of the laptop, yet still wind up with a “The vista activation key you have entered is invalid” and a subsequently reduced-functionality mode system. Twice.
Color me bitter.
Thats the question I ask myself – the amount the spend/spent on all that infrastructure, has it been offset by a drop in piracy – and according to their logic, increase in copies being purchased?
This is the one thing I hate about software companies; companies who say “xyz billion lost because of piracy’ and yet, when it comes to cracking down on piracy, you’d think that their bottom line with increase with the decrease in piracy – the fact is, never occurs.
It uses the false logic that if someone can’t pirate it, they would instantly purchase it – its the same logic with music; my brother downloaded some music, and like he said, if he had to purchase the album, he wouldn’t – the quality of the music, like he said, were too crap to justify spending NZ$25 on a CD but ok enough to justify nicking it.
Edited 2007-12-04 23:12
From the article
Edited 2007-12-05 07:48 UTC
The other big claim …: Vista’s piracy rate so far is half of Windows XP’s.
That might suggest that the pirates don’t want Vista!
The idea that you simply remove piracy all together and will suddenly gain new sales is beyond a myth. Fact has always existed that people that would download 3D Studio Max would often times not be in the market to purchase it. If anything pirating helps to insure the software will be used until such time that people may actually purchase it.
While they see lost sales, I say there are a good portion who will be future customers. How many students and younger people out there without the disposable income to pay $2-4k for an application? But how many who pirated it when they were young are now professionally using it, and paying for it?
I say these things based on more personal experiences in two fields. First, a lot of AutoCAD users I know and work with as clients have almost all said they used a friend’s copy, or got it by other means when they were younger or not able to afford it. Yet here they are now professionals in there field using it, and paying for it. If another company would have released an equally good package for free, users would migrate to it. And when these people become familiar with this free package, which will they use when the time comes they are financially capable of purchasing?
I know quite few guys who do 3D design, and more specifically in their off time do mods and such for some games. The tools they use now happens to be tools they pirated when they were younger. Now however some of these companies have gotten a clue, and release freely available versions. When people get into a comfort zone with one company and their products, they are much more likely to use and pay for later their products, that is a given.
Not suggesting at all that we should suddenly just allow piracy. What I am saying is that it is not as damaging as the companies claim.
I’m sure this costs them custom as well. This is the one big factor stopping me from buying another Microsoft OS. All the bloat, security vulnerabilities and BSODs are irritating but all OSs have their irritations. But being told you can no longer use an OS you paid for because “your hardware has changed too much” … that really sours a person to the whole idea.
What’s paticularly galling, is the fact that they don’t mention any of this before you pay for the OS. I went to Amazon and looked through the license agreement they link to. Now, I’m no lawyer but I certainly couldn’t find any mention of the fact that they may stop activating the OS if the mood takes them.
Vista Home Premium for £60 OEM looks pretty good value until you realize that you’re only renting it for an indefinate period and that during that time, it may repeatedly accuse you of being a thief.
That’s because, as you said, you don’t buy Windows, you rent it, and you don’t pay for a product you own, you pay for services. Activation is part of those services and as such they can refuse to offer them to you at any point.
I believe Microsoft is learning from past history.
Allow me to be brutally honest here: Microsoft is softening their grip on Vista because adoption has been lacklustre at best.
They built an empire with freely-pirateable Windows 3.x and 9x, and decided it was time to exercise the second part of coke-tactics by finally declaring “party’s over, pay for it”.
Now they’re seeing quite an exodus of clients to other “suppliers”, so to speak, in (mainly) Ubuntu and Macs. So their solution is, again, to allow indecent piracy of the OS and hopefully use this to leverage plenty of legitimate purchases from business clients.
Why doesn’t it ever occur to Microsoft to simply lower their prices and offer a single edition of the OS that’s a killer app by itself? If Vista Ultimate Retail was the sole version and cost $200 it would just fly off the shelves; Upgrade at $120. That simple.
Edited 2007-12-04 20:29
“Allow me to be brutally honest here: Microsoft is softening their grip on Vista because adoption has been lacklustre at best.”
Bingo! You hit the nail on the head. I’ve always said that Windows isn’t popular because it’s the best. It’s popular because of shady OEM deals cemented in the early days and years of rampant piracy. Linux is continuing to improve by leaps and bounds while Vista languishes on store shelves. A new version isn’t planned for at least a couple years; meanwhile, users are demanding the continued availability of XP. Microsoft is desperate to keep its users in the fold and this so called concession on WGA is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to maintain its market share.
Agreed, did I also mention it is a lot less of a hastle to run a legit version of Vista with cracks than to bother with WGA?
Especially if you are chopping and changing your hardware and doing component testing for clients.
MS needs to get over the whole activation debacle and release 2 versions of Vista at decent pricing to make it attractive to their clients.
Version 1. Vista x64 Ultimate
Version 2. Vista x64 Business (for those who don’t want all the added BS).
How do you find these cracks? How do you know if the cracking software comes without any malware?
Some nice places to start:
http://www.freebsd.org/
http://www.ubuntu.com/
You guys who suggest that Vista isn’t being adopted because it is hard to pirate are still as wrong as every.
Vista is not being adopted is because it is not better than XP. It is still pirated as easily as any other Windows. The end.
its easier pirated by people like you and me and others that read OSnews but to joe user its not. Sure, everytime Vista validation farts I need to reinject the oem bios (up till sp1) … and I’m fine with that, but watch someone with no clue do that without either
A: killing his system
B: failing
C: getting malware
I dont pirate vista anymore because its shite (well thats not entirely true I run ultimate in a vm just for a laugh) but MS is not aiming at the knowledgeable, they are aiming for the casual user and the large OEMs.
Why do you think they removed WGA from IE7? lack of market share.
Why do you think they removed RFM from Vista? lack of market share.
Most people that can pirate Vista dont think the ‘upgrade’ is worthwhile…. and those that want to pirate vista cant find anyone stupid enough to administer it for them on a full-time basis.
IF Microsoft really cared for their customers none of this WGA crap would be in it in the first place. So that kills the fake PR about ‘feedback from customers’
You answered your own questions at the end there. They’re dialing back the anti-piracy measures that don’t work very well because they’re ineffective AND they hurt real customers. So Microsoft does care about their customers apparently.
Whether you know it or not, Vista is as easily pirated as XP. This is a fact. You can walk into a third world country right now and buy a Vista DVD for a dollar and install it with no problems. Vista’s anti-piracy measures have not just been defeated, they’ve been defeated multiple times in different ways.
Vista is not being adopted because people DON’T LIKE IT. Microsoft and their clients know this and it is not a secret.
My questions were more rhetorical to be honest…. but I’ve not seen any dvd you speak of pre sp1 thats pre patched or works without phoning home …
When I did use Vista on my main computer, every 2 – 3rd week it would tell me my key was invalid and I would have to run the script to reload the fake BIOS. And at that going rate no way was I going to suggest to non techie friends to give it a go… because when it barfed they would be back on at me. Now that MS has taken the reduced functionality away then yes I’d imagine it will be just as easy to confuse as XP.
I can’t help but laugh.. and then cry .. for the friends that bought OEM Vista ultimate legit cds (at least they weren’t stupid enough to buy retail) because they now feel like they’ve been royally screwed. I know fake Vista disk have been available in the far east for ages… but admittedly I’ve no idea how far forward they are these days.
one thing though, the reason Microsoft started targeting illegitimate users in the first place was because they’d ran out of competition to squash… The rest of the market share mostly made up of dodgy installs and I’m thinking MS share holders were simply wanting more money… but with ME II aka Vista being such a dog… there was no real incentive for people going legit after XP and explored other markets… which was the very LAST thing MS wanted…
Microsoft would much rather you ran a pirated copy of Vista and IE than <insert favoured OS> and Firefox legitimately
Edited 2007-12-05 15:49 UTC
Because that would actually make sense and, therefore, go against every single rule in the MS universe. Instead of making the software better so people buys it because it’s actually… better than the competence, they find easier to spend a royal ass-ton of money in crap like WGA to prevent pirates (which, most certainly, wouldn’t buy a legit copy even if they could or were forced to) to use their software.
They have millions of customers, but instead of giving them better services and features, and attracting the (few) people who don’t like their products, they have a brilliant idea: “Let’s screw up our customers!”. Kicking out the pirates who gave them the market critical mass they (once) needed is more important than taking care of those who actually paid for their software who gave them millions.
…spyware is still intact.
It’s kind of wierd that it is more hassle to run XP pirated than vista. never had any trouble with any pirated vista version, well except that i did not like vista. Pirated XP versions needs uppdated wga cracks all the time and is to much hassle. so for now ubuntu fills my needs maby i will buy a real version of xp for a dualboot setup in the future
what Genuine Advantage? is there one.
True. Same thing the *cough* suckers *cough* customers who purchase Windows Vista Ultimate after being promised ‘cool new Ultimate only features’ only to find that no such things have been delivered – sorry if I don’t consider language packs and an animated background as justification for an inflated price.
How about Media Center and BitLocker?
I’m sure I’ve said this before here, but why does nobody ever mention shadow copy? That and the better backup center are the only things that tempt me to upgrade from home premium, but for some reason they are the two things that noone ever mentions when responding to a post like that.
or you could just upgrade your mac for $120 and get frontrow and drive encryption for ‘free’
/hides
Keep WGA in all its PITA glory for all I care.It certainly did help me.Help me get rid of my pirated Windows and switch to Linux completely.No regrets:)
hmms it was like 4 months ago that i installed a pirated vista it have never complaind about a valid key in that time. it was not on my own computer but some friends the parents run ubuntu but thier son dosent like the lok of amsn and such and refuses to use ubuntu.
the reson for vista was that he some how always manged to get xp full of trojans and spyware to the point that it was unusable. when the stationary computer stoped to work with xp he went to dads work laptop(big nono).
ofcourse the mother had no ubuntu problem.
but that install has been running for 4 months solid.
so i guess it has some value for joe user