Microsoft nagware starts anti-pirate campaign

Stan Beer
Thursday, 01 June 2006 19:29

Your IT - Home IT

June 1, 2006 will go down in the annals of history as the day when Microsoft starting nagging pirate Windows XP users around the world to pay up for a genuine copy or suffer the consequences of continual pop-up balloons.

The pop-ups are part of Microsoft's clever Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program which, by the end of the year, will be extended to include most countries around the world. Under the program, WGA software will be downloaded to Windows XP computers with service updates, which then checks to see of the Windows copy installed is genuine. If it isn't, users can expect to get continually nagged by pop-up boxes until they click a "Get Genuine" button and pay the going rate for their country for genuine copy of Windows XP.

However, pirate users needn't worry about being carted off to jail. Microsoft has gone to pains to assure users that it does not intend to collect personal contact information about users.

According to Microsoft, the WGA software may be mandatory for all Windows XP users in the world by the end of the year. Given the amount of pirated Windows XP copies there are in the world, Microsoft could well reap a windfall in the coming year from conversions to the genuine article. However, it could also lose quite a few users in some of the poorer nations, who may be tempted to switch to free Linux distributions.

With Microsoft's Windows XP sales slowing to a stagnant crawl in the past couple of years, Microsoft appears willing to risk losing a few users. With release of Vista supposedly just around the corner, it seems a reasonable strategy to make sure all XP users are paid up. Upgrading to Vista from XP will be much cheaper than buying it from scratch.