Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Microsoft is cracking down on pirating

With the installation of the service pack it will force the user to buy Vista at a pretty reasonable rate:

Microsoft Corp said on Monday it would disable the two primary methods used by software pirates to illegally copy Windows Vista software in the next major update of the operating system.

The world's largest software maker loses billions of dollars to software piracy every year. Microsoft said new features built into Vista are reducing piracy levels by half compared with its previous operating system, Windows XP.

Microsoft plans to improve that one step farther still with changes built into Windows Vista Service Pack 1, the first major update to the operating system, which is due out in the first quarter of 2008.

The company plans to close a loophole that let pirates mimic activation used by some computer manufacturers to install Vista. Microsoft also will clamp down on a method of extending a "grace period" time between installation and activation.

[...]

If a user of pirated software wants to purchase a genuine copy of Windows from Microsoft, they can do so for $89 for the Home Basic version or $119 for the Home Premium version.