Microsoft Product Activation
Let's see if I've got this straight. Microsoft bolts together an
excellent office package by purchasing programs from many other
companies (or just purchasing the companies outright) and
improves those products tremendously. They put an incredibly
high price on the product, and in spite of that price manage to
sell enough to more-or-less own the market. Admittedly, the
product is excellent, so good, in fact, that it is ruthlessly
copied by people all over the planet. In spite of the copying,
Microsoft manages to eek out a few tens of billions of dollars
on this product suite alone.
After numerous releases, the product has finally come close to
perfection with Office 2000. In fact, it's so close to
perfection that the only significant "features" of the following
version are smart tags (which no one seems to want and are not
implemented very well anyway) and product activation.
Now it turns out that there really is not any reason for anyone
in their right mind to upgrade their Office suite from 2000 to
XP. I've looked closely at the new release, and I could not sell
my boss on spending several hundred dollars per copy - there is
absolutely no return on investment of any kind. And as far as
the home version is concerned - why on earth would I want to
change? The Office 2000 suite already contains everything I
could ever possibly want from this kind of product plus about
2000% more.
Naturally Microsoft has figured this out and has taken steps to
remedy the situation. They have decided, in their infinite
wisdom, that we shall upgrade whether we like it or not.
You see, businesses are being forced to upgrade through changes
in support and licensing agreements. It does not matter that not
a single person in my position at any company that I know of has
any plans to upgrade to Office XP at any time in the immediate
future. We have to purchase the upgrade almost immediately or we
may have to pay outrageous fees to upgrade in a few years. Since
it's a pretty good bet that the newer operating systems will not
run older versions of the Office suite, we are pretty much being
forced to upgrade because, well, we don't have any choice.
Obviously Microsoft's biggest problem with home users is
convincing them to install the product on one and only one
computer system. Heaven forbid that someone purchase a product
and actually install it on two computers that he owns - it
doesn't matter that he paid over $479 ($239 for the upgrade) for
a glorified word processor, a spreadsheet program and some other
things he will probably never use.
To prevent this travesty of justice, Microsoft has created
product activation. What this means is you purchase the product
(in this case, the Office XP suite) and install it on your
computer. Now you get to run it 50 times or so before it more or
less stops working. You now have to activate the product, which
means you let it "phone home" over the internet. You get to do
this on one and only one machine.
If the machine changes too much, the product stops working and
you may have to do it all again. After too many changes (I think
it's two), the product will no longer work at all until you
physically pick up the phone and call Microsoft and get a, get
this, 50 character activation key.
What on earth is Microsoft using for brains? Here you've got
someone who actually purchased their product in spite of the
high price and you make it difficult for them to install the
thing? On top of that, if they have the gall to want to also
install it on their wife's computer, then you force them to go
out and buy another copy?
This is (excuse me, was) a loyal customer who plunked down some
hard earned money for an office suite which is priced
significantly more than the competition. Keep in mind that this
person could have bought a much cheaper product like StarOffice,
paid a lot less and got every single feature that he could
possibly want. He chose Office because he wanted Office, and he
was willing to pay extra to get it. And now he gets slammed
across the face.
But what about software piracy? This product activation scheme
does absolutely nothing to prevent piracy. Believe me, the
hackers and crackers had warez copies posted to their sites
before the product was even released! You think some silly
activation scheme is going to stop these people?
I know, the news has been full of stories about places like
China, which reportedly makes millions of illegal copies all of
the time. Do you think this silly little thing is going to stop
them? I'll bet they had the product activation removed even
before the hackers.
What should Microsoft have done? In my humble opinion, they
should have created an upgrade that was worth the trouble and
price of an upgrade, to begin with. Office XP doesn't even come
close. On top of that, how about creating a "home license" which
allows copies to be legally made on any computer in a single
home? Charge an extra 20% for it if you have to - or better yet,
just allow people to make those extra copies on their wife's
computer system.
What product activation does is two things: one, it is designed
to convince everyone that the upgrade has some value. Otherwise,
why would Microsoft bother to work so hard to protect it?
Second, it hurts the home user, who now has to make the choice:
purchase multiple copies of office using very hard earned money,
purchase a different product (such as StarOffice), or get an
illegal copy.
Personally, I'll be checking out the competition. This, by the
way, is something that I would never have dreamed about a couple
of years ago. In my opinion, the Office 2000 suite is by far the
best tool of it's class on the market. But is it worth so much
that I'd pay two or three times for it? Hardly. No, let's see,
where can I get a demo copy of StarOffice? Perhaps WordPerfect
or Lotus has improved in the five years or so since I looked at
them last? Let's see...