Customers will decide whether that's true later this year, when Microsoft delivers its first release of the new Whistler version of Windows, featuring "product activation," a revised version of anti-piracy technology that was widely criticised in Office 2000.
Product activation requires purchasers of Microsoft software--whether they obtain the product at retail or preloaded on PCs--to "activate" the product, either by phone or the Internet.
Microsoft has struggled with privacy matters in the past. In response to customer complaints, Microsoft agreed to change the "registration wizard" code for Windows 98 so it would not send a customer's hardware ID number to the company's Web site without permission.
When Microsoft issues its next test version of Whistler, the successor to Windows 2000, in the next month or so, a large number of testers will obtain first-hand experience with product activation. Word of the Windows product activation feature leaked out this week via a smaller group of Whistler testers, and many customers expressed scepticism about Microsoft's intentions.
Whistler isn't the only product slated to feature product activation technology. Microsoft also is planning to include the anti-piracy code in numerous other products on tap for this year, including Office 10, the successor to Office 2000; Visual Studio .Net; and Visio 10, said sources close to the company.
Microsoft executives said the company has made no decision whether to license product activation to other software makers who might be interested in the technology.
"We've looked at what other companies have implemented (as anti-piracy measures) and learned from that," said Allen Nieman, a Microsoft product manager for Windows.
Nieman acknowledged that Microsoft also learned lessons from its past mistakes. The company took its lumps a few years back with the original anti-piracy scheme it devised for Office.
