Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage program is meant to deter piracy and allow full functionality for those that hav a legitimate copy of Windows. It has been assumed all along that there would Microsoft would do more in the future with this information than just display a notification on your desktop. And Microsoft is now giving more information about what that will mean. Not specifrics, but more generalities.
The statements they are making now say that “premium” features will only be available to “Genuine” users, though they decline to be specific about the features they are talking about. The premium features that will be built into Vista were not expounded on either. The only specific software they mentioned being available only to Genuine users are Windows Defender, a spyware program, Windows Media Player 11.0 and Internet Explorer 7.0.
Not the best PR move, but they must feel the potential revenue increase is worth it. There being very little real competition (I do not discount Linux, but it has a long way to go to even come close to Window’s market share), they must feel there should be no problem. They had better be sure that their WGA checking is accurate, though. As this article points out, the writer wanted to check out some WGA complaints and could not even get his system to fail the WGA check with a key he found through a Google search.
