Vista and software piracy

T

Taffy Apple

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 4, 2005
Messages
376
First off - This is nothing to do with carrying out software piracy. Being a developer myself, I am against it, always advising my clients to buy genuine. It is not my intent to break the forum rules, and I totally understand if the moderators kill this thread. But I do genuinely have a question about Vista and illegal software.

I'm about to build a new PC for someone, who has a copy of office and I know for a fact that it’s not genuine. Now I can't stop them installing it after they've taken delivery of the PC, in the same way a car manufacturer can't stop you drink driving, but I do have a question with regards to Vista and illegal software.

I've vaguely remember reading something about Vista restricting the functionality of illegal software, but was this purely in relation to illegal copies of Vista, or everything Microsoft?
 
Vista itself will become "feature crippled" if pirated by installing without a key and trying to use it past the 30 day "grace period" that it offers. iirc, Office 2007's trial editions will do basically the same thing and offer reduced functionality (no save, no print, etc) after their trial periods run out. The 30 day thing with Vista is not a "trial period" as most people seem to think; it's there for a legitimate reason of hardware and software testing for new customers as Microsoft doesn't offer a "trial edition" for download of Vista and they never will.

As for other software being disabled, that's up for grabs. I doubt that Microsoft would concern itself with software piracy with non-Microsoft products - their only concern is people ripping them off directly, so to speak.

Not sure if that answers the question you're asking, but I'm sure other people will chime in soon enough...
 
They dont restrict anything. Vista is just a prettier XP, if they had to spend 5 years redesigning the whole OS they done a crappy job. Not only it takes 2 minutes to crack it and make it fully functional, it was available half a month before you could buy it in stores.


However.


Windows updates might come on your friend and restrict use of operating system and maybe the program. I dont know if they would, but they could, right? So, ghost an image of his bone stock OS so if he screws up you could be nice and redo his whole system in minutes and whipe this data at the same time so he dont come back.
 
Vista will not restrict the use of pirated software at all. Nor will it stop your illegal activities.
 
4600cc said:
Vista is just a prettier XP, if they had to spend 5 years redesigning the whole OS they done a crappy job.
Click to expand...
LOL :rolleyes:


and OP, I don't think a legit Vista install would be affected by a pirated Office (could be wrong)
If it's Office 2003 maybe you can convince them to use OpenOffice. They're very similar.
You can even install it for them after setting up the OS.... maybe they'll try it then :)
 
I think you are remembering the hype and doom talk about Microsoft's Palladium project, which was supposed to be some hardware/software DRM-like security. People were worried it would put an end to warez and also small user-created software that isn't approved by Microsoft.
 
ChingChang said:
LOL :rolleyes:


and OP, I don't think a legit Vista install would be affected by a pirated Office (could be wrong)
...
Click to expand...
You're not wrong. I can verify that it would be completely functional as I've tested it to verify.

There is nothing in Vista which is aimed at detecting pirated software and impacting on its functionality. Seems to me that the OT poster has been hearing speculation made by people with little understanding of the subject matter.

But it depends upon the technique used to pirate software, of course. If the technique used is detectable to WGA validation checks then the user will encounter problems. That's not a Vista-related thing though. It'll occur in any Windows version which uses WGA validation checks.
 
4600cc said:
They dont restrict anything. Vista is just a prettier XP, if they had to spend 5 years redesigning the whole OS they done a crappy job. Not only it takes 2 minutes to crack it and make it fully functional, it was available half a month before you could buy it in stores.


However.


Windows updates might come on your friend and restrict use of operating system and maybe the program. I dont know if they would, but they could, right? So, ghost an image of his bone stock OS so if he screws up you could be nice and redo his whole system in minutes and whipe this data at the same time so he dont come back.
Click to expand...

LOL another one of those people. I guess common sense isn't very common these days.
 
I seriously doubt vista is gonna disable a pirated program. The amount of time and programing involved is just not worth the investment for them. As far as Pirating an entire OS then yes its worth it for them , but for a less important piece of software i doubt microsoft would take the time to actively force this feature.
 
Vista does not have the necessary code to functionally limit every single piece of software ever written ever that could possibly be pirated.

However, in the future I expect alot of MS apps (and others) that use phone-home activation to impose functionality limitations on themselves when they are suspected of not being genuine.

As a developer, you could write that into your apps if you so choose.
 
Godmachine said:
I seriously doubt vista is gonna disable a pirated program. The amount of time and programing involved is just not worth the investment for them. As far as Pirating an entire OS then yes its worth it for them , but for a less important piece of software i doubt microsoft would take the time to actively force this feature.
Click to expand...

They don't. Trust me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top