I was digging through some Vista Documents on the MS website. I came across this interesting document:
It lays out the software protection within Vista, and the supposed reasons for it. They try really hard not to say the truth: We automatically assume you are a thief, and have no respect for you as a customer.
Don’t get me wrong. Like I have said before. I am not a MS bashing zealot. I like their products. But…the activation scheme reminds me of when I worked at a well known toy store here in the US (Man that was a long time ago) – They would check my toolbox every night for stolen items. (They did this for all bike builders). It made me feel like dirt for just going into work.
The alarming part is that it will now be required for *all* versions of Vista. No reprieve for volume license keys. This means even large corporations with thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of machines will now have the windows activation hammer hanging over their heads.
This is another reason why I think the corporate adoption of Vista will take much longer than Microsoft expects. They are creating the same situation they had with Windows 98.
Windows 98 usage lingered on for years and years. People were happy with that version of windows, and saw no reason to upgrade. That time it had nothing to do with licensing. Just the perceived pain of switching. Lots of trouble for some programs, and devices switching to 2000, or XP since it was a whole new platform. Only until they were forced by lack of support, and lack of patches did the masses start abandoning it.
What if they make that pain so great this time that it is less painful to switch to a completely different alternative like Mac OSX? Nahh. That won’t happen. Unless the Mac can run windows applications natively. I remember hearing a rumor that the next version of OSX will do exactly that.
Back in the day there was a company that was #1 in the network server world. They too got crazy with licensing. Hmm. Novell? Anyone remember how MS pounded Novell? How did they do it? I watched it happen while working as a network consultant back in the early 90s. Windows NT was highly inferior, but it cost less and the licensing was extremely lax. It allowed the techs to easily install and test it on computers at home. Novell was so damn expensive, and the licensing was so harsh it was difficult to even get approval to have one for learning, and testing. I believe this single point is what drove the adoption of NT. Microsoft has forgotten this. They do it at their own peril.
Look at the pricing lately for windows? I could build a new computer for less than a full version of Ultimate.