Vista “kill switch” killed — No surprise…WGA’s real problem
I saw this story pop-up a couple times: once on Slashdot and again on Engadget. MS has killed the kill switch to Vista. Windows XP had something similar going on with it in the past, but that too was actually killed or rather removed from XP. Now it just annoys unregistered copies.But then I got to thinking — what is really wrong with the WGA kill switching?
Well, I noticed some stories start talking about illegal distributers handing out illegal version of Windows, often at a cost, even if it’s pennies to the dollar. So, what would happen if an unsuspecting user bought a copy of that OS only to be told, buy MS, the OS they just paid for is invalid? That would indeed be an error on the part of the seller; however, it also causes issues and frustrations with the consumer. Now they are stuck here, with a purchased copy of Windows that happened to be invalid. Your average consumer, however, will not know it’s illegal and will call Microsoft, per the instructions, only to be told they have to re-buy the OS at a substantial increase over what they may have already bought the OS for initially.
This brings up the reals problem — it’s hardly a user friendly method and their WGA annoyer assumes the user intentionally installed an unauthorized version of Windows. This assumption is, as you can guess, pissing off the consumers. And this lays into the real problem; the assumption your users are pirates right off the bat. What makes matters worse, your average pirate will know they have a pirated version and will either work around the annoyance or find a way to hack the OS to make it work indefinite. Who wins here? The pirates. Who looses? The consumer. I hardly see how this is beneficial for Microsoft.
