Microsoft has big plans in store for its Windows Vista
operating system. The company released a release candidate version of Service
Pack 1 (SP1) for Windows Vista in mid-November. SP1 is supposed to address
a number of performance-related issues with Vista and includes a number of
security update and bug fixes that have been rolled out since the operating
system launched over a year ago.
In addition to the previously mentioned SP1 features,
Microsoft is looking to make pirating Vista a tougher endeavor. The Redmond,
Washington-based company says that new measures
introduced with SP1 will further reduce piracy -- piracy for Vista is already
less than half that of Windows XP according to Microsoft.
One loophole that Microsoft will close is the current method
of extending the "grace period" to activate Vista. Original versions
of the exploit allowed users to extend
the grace period from 30 days to 120 days. Later variations of the hack extended
the grace period to a full year, while yet another extended the grace
period to the year 2099.
"Under this new system, no features will be disabled.
Instead it will be a notification-based experience similar in some ways to what
we have done with XP. A user of a system that has not been activated and gone
through the 30-day grace period to activate will, when logging in on the 31st
day, see a dialog box on a plain black background," said Microsoft group
product manager Alex Kochis.
"That will give them two options: Activate Windows now,
which will bring up all the options to do this, and activate Windows later,
which takes them directly to their desktop, which will be exactly the same as
it had been the last time they used it, except that there will be a plain black
background and a message in the lower right hand corner over the system tray
telling them that their copy of Windows is not genuine," Kochis continued.
Microsoft will also put a stop to the OEM BIOS exploit which
allows unscrupulous Vista pirates to edit systems files and a motherboard's
BIOS to fool Windows into thinking that it is installed in a genuine OEM
system.
These latest additions to Vista, however, will do little to
quell those who continue to rally behind Microsoft's venerable Windows XP
operating system. Due to customer demand, Microsoft extended
the shelf life of Windows XP and has given OEMs the ability to
provide Windows XP downgrades for customers who are unhappy with their new
Windows Vista-based machines. In addition, recent testing has shown that Vista
SP1 is no
match for Windows XP SP3 in OfficeBench performance which gotten much play
around the web.
Not surprisingly, Apple has pounced on Microsoft's Vista
woes and has a number
of television
commercials which poke
fun at Vista's "inferiority" to Windows XP.