Microsoft,Product,Activation,L technology Microsoft Product Activation

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Let's see if I've got this straight. Microsoft bolts together an excellentoffice package by purchasing programs from many other companies (or justpurchasing the companies outright) and improves those products tremendously.They put an incredibly high price on the product, and in spite of that pricemanage to sell enough to more-or-less own the market. Admittedly, theproduct is excellent, so good, in fact, that it is ruthlessly copied bypeople all over the planet. In spite of the copying, Microsoft manages toeek out a few tens of billions of dollars on this product suite alone.After numerous releases, the product has finally come close to perfectionwith Office 2000. In fact, it's so close to perfection that the onlysignificant "features" of the following version are smart tags (which no oneseems to want and are not implemented very well anyway) and productactivation.Now it turns out that there really is not any reason for anyone in theirright mind to upgrade their Office suite from 2000 to XP. I've lookedclosely at the new release, and I could not sell my boss on spending severalhundred dollars per copy - there is absolutely no return on investment ofany kind. And as far as the home version is concerned - why on earth would Iwant to change? The Office 2000 suite already contains everything I couldever possibly want from this kind of product plus about 2000% more.Naturally Microsoft has figured this out and has taken steps to remedy thesituation. They have decided, in their infinite wisdom, that we shallupgrade whether we like it or not.You see, businesses are being forced to upgrade through changes in supportand licensing agreements. It does not matter that not a single person in myposition at any company that I know of has any plans to upgrade to Office XPat any time in the immediate future. We have to purchase the upgrade almostimmediately or we may have to pay outrageous fees to upgrade in a few years.Since it's a pretty good bet that the newer operating systems will not runolder versions of the Office suite, we are pretty much being forced toupgrade because, well, we don't have any choice.Obviously Microsoft's biggest problem with home users is convincing them toinstall the product on one and only one computer system. Heaven forbid thatsomeone purchase a product and actually install it on two computers that heowns - it doesn't matter that he paid over $479 ($239 for the upgrade) for aglorified word processor, a spreadsheet program and some other things hewill probably never use.To prevent this travesty of justice, Microsoft has created productactivation. What this means is you purchase the product (in this case, theOffice XP suite) and install it on your computer. Now you get to run it 50times or so before it more or less stops working. You now have to activatethe product, which means you let it "phone home" over the internet. You getto do this on one and only one machine.If the machine changes too much, the product stops working and you may haveto do it all again. After too many changes (I think it's two), the productwill no longer work at all until you physically pick up the phone and callMicrosoft and get a, get this, 50 character activation key.What on earth is Microsoft using for brains? Here you've got someone whoactually purchased their product in spite of the high price and you make itdifficult for them to install the thing? On top of that, if they have thegall to want to also install it on their wife's computer, then you forcethem to go out and buy another copy?This is (excuse me, was) a loyal customer who plunked down some hard earnedmoney for an office suite which is priced significantly more than thecompetition. Keep in mind that this person could have bought a much cheaperproduct like StarOffice, paid a lot less and got every single feature thathe could possibly want. He chose Office because he wanted Office, and he waswilling to pay extra to get it.And now he gets slammed across the face.But what about software piracy? This product activation scheme doesabsolutely nothing to prevent piracy. Believe me, the hackers and crackershad warez copies posted to their sites before the product was even released!You think some silly activation scheme is going to stop these people?I know, the news has been full of stories about places like China, whichreportedly makes millions of illegal copies all of the time. Do you thinkthis silly little thing is going to stop them? I'll bet they had the productactivation removed even before the hackers.What should Microsoft have done? In my humble opinion, they should havecreated an upgrade that was worth the trouble and price of an upgrade, tobegin with. Office XP doesn't even come close. On top of that, how aboutcreating a "home license" which allows copies to be legally made on anycomputer in a single home? Charge an extra 20% for it if you have to - orbetter yet, just allow people to make those extra copies on their wife'scomputer system.What product activation does is two things: one, it is designed to convinceeveryone that the upgrade has some value. Otherwise, why would Microsoftbother to work so hard to protect it? Second, it hurts the home user, whonow has to make the choice: purchase multiple copies of office using veryhard earned money, purchase a different product (such as StarOffice), or getan illegal copy.Personally, I'll be checking out the competition. This, by the way, issomething that I would never have dreamed about a couple of years ago. In myopinion, the Office 2000 suite is by far the best tool of it's class on themarket. But is it worth so much that I'd pay two or three times for it?Hardly. No, let's see, where can I get a demo copy of StarOffice? PerhapsWordPerfect or Lotus has improved in the five years or so since I looked atthem last? Let's see... Article Tags: Product Activation, Office 2000, Office Suite