Recent WGA failure shows flaw in Microsoft’s strategy for Vista, Office
Remember the days when “the customer was always right.” I do, just barely, I came into the world when this strategy was beginning to wane. Microsoft has adopted just the opposite of this and applied it to Vista and Office 2007 (and 2003). The WGA failure over the weekend left many legitimate users scratching their head.
What is supposed to be a system for preventing piracy ended becoming a headache for users of Vista and XP. This is where the activation scheme is flawed because all it ended up doing in this case is punishing legitimate users. Some copies of Vista even dropped into “reduced functionality mode” turning off Aero and only allowing access to IE.
According to ComputerWorld this isn’t the first time that WGA has caused problems and it probably won’t be the last. If hackers want to find a way around WGA then they will and there is nothing Microsoft can do about it except tighten its grip but as we’ve witnessed with this, all that ended up happening was legitimate users getting the boot.
There is also a similar “reduced mode” present in Office 2003 and Office 2007 in that you will be able to open and print existing documents but will not be able to edit or save them. Isn’t that wonderful?
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