So their motivation is to make the illegitimate users go legit? What a
surprise.
Yes, the honest user will be inconvenienced on occasion by the new security
implementation. Just like I have to wait in line at the airport to get
through security, or wait at the police checkpoint to see if I'm wearing my
safety belt and have my vehicle inspected, or tolerate the fact that I am
being filmed as I shop at Wally World.
"Microsoft trusted its users to do the right thing and generally they did"
This was before the notion of "get it for free on the internet" existed. The
theives then were far and few between, now many have the attitude of not
paying unless you get caught.
"There is a restriction on how many times users can transfer the boxed copy
of Windows they purchase to a new machine."
While we don't know for sure that this will be the case, I do agree this
will be a bad move. However, this is a private company that has the right to
restrict how their software is used. If the imposed limitation is a bad one,
which I believe it to be, it will make itself evident in a small backlash
from the technical community. I say "small" because the truth is that the
majority get their copy of Windows with the system and never do major
hardware upgrades. The power user that builds their own machine is still a
very tiny minority.
"There will be no long queues of users outside computer stores lining up to
buy a boxed copy of Vista Home Basic to load on their underpowered XP
computers"
Start me up! Remember Win95 - those days, the days when only geeks had
computers, are gone. Computers are in the realm of the great unwashed, the
technically inefficient. This is why the transfer limitation will probably
not have any major affect in sales, as to most it simply won't matter.
"The strategy is a risky one. Like pirate CDs and DVDs, the vast majority of
pirate Windows copies proliferate in second and third world markets. The
reason is that many users in those markets find Windows prohibitively
expensive. Can Microsoft force a significant proportion of them to go
legitimate? Perhaps, or perhaps it will simply drive them into the welcoming
arms of the Linux world."
Risky? No, more like calculated risk, and probably a safe one based on the
points I've already given. It's not the geek's world anymore. Is it too
expensive in the tirdl world market? Hell, it's too expensive in the first
world market, but it still sells. Linux, as far as it has come along, is
still the realm of the geek. Linux could actually benefit from a marketing
campaign, but that will never happen as there is no profit motive in doing
so.
--
Best of Luck,
Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help -
www.rickrogers.org
"Alias~-" <notever@aolhell.net> wrote in message
news:uYjzRN0%23GHA.3860@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
> http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/6713/983/
>
> Good article and so true.
>
> Alias