Vista to have strict and dramatic anti-piracy steps added

Time bombs, Root kits, Spy-Ware Oh my. The Warez stuff is looking safer all the time

I hope they make it more competitive price wise. $200 OS is just outragous to me when you can buy a mac OS for almost a $100 cheaper.

The problem with the Mac OS is Apple releases a new version like almost every year and charges $100 for each version.

unbuntu is free!!!and they send ou a cd for free to your home address... vista?

The price is not a result of competition in this case, but an assumption of M$'s market dominance. The reality is 10 years ago nobody even suspected there was an alternative to IE (some tried NS to show off) and today they already lost at least 10% of all users. The same is going to happen on the OSs arena. Not many will want that resource choking Aero anyways. The bottom line is if we dont support proprietory win formats and crap, it will be much easier to swith in future.

XP works fine now, and i assume it will for a while longer...the next OS will probably be linux...cant beat the price:+

Upon first glance, this looks like a very interesting way for Microsoft to address piracy problems. In effect, they are crippling the pirated OS to a "trial version" sort of functionality, while continuing to allow security updates and patches. Sounds like a decent solution to me!

ROTFLMAO :B :B :B :B :B

10 years ago, IE was just starting out. Nobody suspected IE was an alternative to Netscape (or even Mosaic). Netscape wasn't even an AOL property then. Just wait until all of the valid licensed Vista systems start reverting to "trial version" status because they are mis-detected as pirate versions. Just one more good reason to give Vista a miss.

"Just wait until all of the valid licensed Vista systems start reverting to "trial version" status because they are mis-detected as pirate versions." yeah or when you want to re-install vista

i bet the hackers are rubbing their hands now just waiting to hack it. Shouldn't take much longer than a month

It will either hacked very fast or nobody will use it. After all it have nothing really new to propose besides gimics and more anti users protections.

yeah i think that is very true, its all gimics and more anti piracy. Really think about it, computers are expensive enough, how do they expect people to pay for software to, either make the computers cheaper or the software. I am a dual user, and Apple never pulls this anti piracy stuff, i think being a hardware vender is better since you can make your software cheaper, and it just works better. and as for teh comment about new os every year, atleast if you find a $100 unfair every year ( i do) then you can pirate it without fear, and just pay every 2 years. Apple really makes no money on the os. so they never really cared about the pirating of it, and i hope that dont change. If it wasnt for piracy the computer business would not be as large as it is. there has to be a give somewhere, or people will have to do without.

Oh well, the end of fair use is nigh!:c

As the gov of my fair state used to say, "hasta la VISTA, baby"!

How's this any different (or worse) than XP's activation? After 30 days without activation, XP only works in safe mode. Forget browsing the Web for even an hour at a time. It won't work without the network card enabled. Sucks as it does, we're no worse off (except there isn't a Vista crack yet - but there will be).

well all I can say is speaking from experience with customer's computers, this is going to suck. At least once per week I get a computer that does not validate because the OEM key is invalid. So I gotta call MS and get the key validated so that it will work. Sony's I find are the worst for this. How long until legitmate users are told their valid copy is not legitimate. How long until MS stops supporting these problems? I can just see the people who refuse to update ( I still deal with windows 95 computers) are forced to buy a new computer because MS no longer has a call center to validate their OS!

That's actually a good point. Once Microsoft stops supporting XP, it would be a pity to see them pull the plug on supporting XP activation. From my experience of being a past IT technician at PC store, I have already seen XP deactivate just by connecting the PC up to a different keyboard, mouse & monitor (for testing). For example, someone would have dropped off a PC at the office to remove viruses, malware, etc and when I would power it up, Windows would mention about due to a significant hardware change, it must be reactivated. This generally happened if the PC had some other upgrade at some previous stage. In a few cases, I seen Windows deactivate after the PC was returned after an upgrade, e.g. it would have worked fine before leaving the office, but once the customer powered it up, it became deactivated. My worst experience is when it came to a similar issue with a server. I had to replace a just installed server due to an issue. All went well until I had to activate the OS and was requested to call Microsoft. Microsoft put me through a long list of questions asking if I am definitely sure this is the only server, that I realise it is illegal to install this same key on two servers, etc. Trying to convince them that this is just a replacement for a faulty server was not easy. I wonder what it will be like for hardware tweakers who regularly change the CPU, Memory, graphics cards, etc.

"I wonder what it will be like for hardware tweakers who regularly change the CPU, Memory, graphics cards, etc." They will gladly buy a new licence whenever they replace their hardware components, of course! I mean, they can spend hundreds of dollars/euros/... on hardware every few months, so the few extra bucks on a new OS licence cannot possibly hurt them, can they? :B Of course, they could become smarter, and look for alternatives to Microsoft; Linux is evolving pretty fast these days, and any hardcore tweaker should have more fun with a decent Linux distribution than with that boring Windows stuff anyway.

I believe that if Microsoft really wanted it, they could easily detect and disable pirated versions of XP or Vista. Their anti-piracy protection is not perfect because it would scare too many people away to alternatives like mac or *nix. I guess it's all about marketing.

Passssshhhh x 10,000. Yea right Micro$haft.. 150k paid software devs < the entire planet of hackers and disgruntled_at_life-kids-in-their-basements-with-a-shear-passion-for-hacking segment of society. All protection currently is being circumvented even on lowly apps. This is Windows VISTA - a massive lightning rod flagship product everyone can and will someday use. I can see this circumvented in a week or even days. Look how sad their Genuine Advantage fiasco is going. Gawd what a purile joke + farce. That was bypassed fast and continues so to this day. Loving those 150k paycheques eh Micro$hiet code engs? Hard to compete with a global hacker mind.

all i say is, once linux is implemented with the ability to handle *.exe's, it'll be the real time for competence against MS, and MS will have to really work on making a real working OS instead of finding ways to stop hacking it!!! afterall, if linux xan support exe's, simply, they win

It's only your usual Microsoft run of the mill activation scheme. It wont work on a properly cracked version. Still, the mere fact that MS does not want to shut out "pirates" shows their priorities, being the biggest overrules loss of sales on this particular area. Otherwise, god forbid, people might start use Ubuntu or OSX...