If your copy of Windows XP is not genuine, you will not be able to download updates or free Microsoft software like Windows Defender. With Vista, if your copy is not genuine, eventually it will stop working completely, offering you only a 1 hour session with a web browser at your disposal.

The same is being done for Office 2003. If your copy is not genuine, no more updates can be downloaded, leaving you vulnerable to Word or other Office documents that have been compromised.

From Microsoft’s point of view, they have been ripped off for years by people worldwide, pirating their software. Now, with Microsoft’s software more mature and useful than it has ever been, and with the nature of today’s connected world, Microsoft can ensure that those who want to use Microsoft software will have to pay.

From a capitalist point of view, there is nothing wrong with this, and it is actually the right course of action. But from the point of view of screwing every dollar out of your customers, well, I supposed Microsoft, despite the tens of billions of dollars of revenue earned every year, feels that they were screwed right back by the world and now they can do something about it.

It is a shame that software has to be so expensive. It would seem to make sense that if you lowered the price, you’d sell many, many more copies legally, and would earn more money from volume sales than from a high profit margin. Perhaps when Apple and Linux or even Google are much more of a threat, Microsoft will finally drop prices to a much more sensible level.

What’s a good example of this? Well, how about offering Windows Vista Ultimate for the price of Windows Vista Basic and just doing away with all the other versions completely (aside from the high end ‘enterprise’ versions of Vista) and letting the user decide what should and shouldn’t be installed, recommending what would be best, whether they had purchased a dirt cheap new computer, or a $5000 speed demon?

That’s not going to happen anytime soon, unfortunately, although Microsoft did make moves to allow US purchasers of Vista Ultimate the ability to purchase two extra copies of Vista Home Premium for US $50 each, which amounts to a discount if you have more than one computer at home and want to upgrade them.

So, although virtualization is only legally permitted on certain versions of Vista, with the other versions able to run virtually anyway just simply not legally, Microsoft is making life difficult for consumers, be they Mac or PC owners, who want to take advantage of readily available virtualization software.

They are doing this by forcing consumers who want to abide by the law to pay the very highest prices of all – it sounds more like a punishment than a reward. Microsoft is unlikely to change their attitude soon on this, just as Apple is unlikely to lose the perception of being arrogant any time soon.

But one day, Microsoft will have to change the way they do business, and will have prices that acknowledge the commoditized nature of operating systems. I just hope, for Microsoft’s sake, that despite their present large installed base, this change of business tactics won’t come too late.

After all, Microsoft rose from nowhere to defeat IBM at the operating system game. With the next version of Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard rumored to be due in March, along with regular new versions of Linux, Microsoft and Windows will be under the most intense pressure it has truly ever faced.

Microsoft is in no present danger of losing dominance in the operating system space. But competitors are not standing still. Microsoft – it’s the customer that has funded your rise to the top. Of course, we needed to have products worth buying, and whatever people say, your products are indeed very popular.

Returning your focus onto making your customers lives easier, not cluttering them with arcane restrictions on things like the virtualization issue or encumbering us all with messy DRM limitations is what you should be doing, at realistic prices to boot.

It won’t be governments forcing you to do this, or at least I hope it won’t be, for I’m no fan of big government and all the intervention and troubles that entails – Microsoft, you know about all of that only too well.

It’ll be customers, voting with their wallets for solutions that are as good or better than yours, that let customers do more of what they want to do, if not do it all. Please don’t wait for a crisis to change your ways – do it from the next version of Windows, if by then it is not already on the verge of being too late.
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Alex Zaharov-Reutt  Apple  Linux  Macintosh  Microsoft  Software  Vista  Windows