Microsoft Makes Office Validation Mandatory

[dualmeister]

MS office will soon require mandatory validation as well.

It’s official. Starting October 27 2006, Microsoft has made Office validation mandatory in order to gain access to Office Online templates for the Office 2007 Microsoft Office System applications. Although
Office Genuine Advantage, the sister of windows Genuine Advantage has been around since April 2006, Microsoft has delayed mandatory validation of legitimacy since yesterday. This move marks another milestone in the Redmond Company’s antipiracy initiative by introducing piracy checks for the second Microsoft product. Forthcoming products from Microsoft such as Vista will integrate the Software Protection Platform to counteract piracy.

"Vista's Software Protection Platform wasn't ready at the time we needed to make a decision about anti-piracy in Office 2007's development," said Ashim Jaidka, director of the Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) program. As a result, the technology in the Office Genuine Advantage is based on that implemented in Windows Genuine Advantage. "It's a variant of that, and an extension of WGA."

Office customers running counterfeit copies of Office acquired as legitimate fall under the incidence of Microsoft’s Genuine Office Complimentary Offer provided they can fill out a counterfeit report, deliver proof of purchase and send in their counterfeit CDs to the Redmond Company. Otherwise, the payment of a license fee will be required. Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 will come with a price tag of $359, while the Microsoft Office Small Business Edition 2003 will cost $269 and the Microsoft Office Student and Teacher Edition 2003 $139.

Source

 

[Random717]

openoffice here i come..

 

[kissingmybbgoodbye]

Open office here as well (If every one moved to open office i wonder what will happen to micro$oft)

 

[ic]

Been using OpenOffice for quite a while now [nearly 2 years], and I really don't miss having to download a whole lot of hotfixes for some Internet Exploder etc vulnerabilities that M$ designed and implemented into M$ Office, besides M$ Office doesn't run on my [now] Linux desktop PC anyways so take that M$!!!

 

[Paul_S]

Open office here as well (If every one moved to open office i wonder what will happen to micro$oft)

They'd lose a lot of revenue - Office and Windows are MS's main cash cows and IIRC Office is the larger of the two.
OpenOffice.org isn't quite on par with MS Office yet but it's close enough and there is no ways I'm buying MS Office for ~R2000 when I can get it for free and run it on my desktop OS (Linux).
Even my father didn't complain when I switched MS Office for OpenOffice.org on his PC.

I see the Munich municipality are now migrating their desktops (14000 PCs) across to their own Linux flavour now (LiMux). If enough big MS users do this MS are going to start feeling the pain. Maybe that's why they're increasing their anti-piracy technology in their latest offerings.
Then there's also Google who's threatening to do them some damage with web based apps.
It's all good though - more competition will force MS to start innovating again or at least drop the prices.

 

[Gnome]

I've been wondering about switching to Open Office, but I need to open lots of Powerpoint,Word and Excel documents, can Open Office open them or am I stuck with M$ Office? They are seriously pissing everyone off with this Validation BS, esp. the OEM's & Network Admins working for Big Companies/Orginizations,ect. Just Imagine activating 500 PC's

 

[Person]

If you buy the products like you are meant to do, there is no problem.

 

[ic]

I've been wondering about switching to Open Office, but I need to open lots of Powerpoint,Word and Excel documents, can Open Office open them or am I stuck with M$ Office? They are seriously pissing everyone off with this Validation BS, esp. the OEM's & Network Admins working for Big Companies/Orginizations,ect. Just Imagine activating 500 PC's

Yes, OpenOffice2 works very well, but don't take my word for it - best that you do a test drive...

 

[Syndyre]

True, but adding extra hassles for your legitimate customers will put them off buying your products.

 

[ShockG]

Interesting. All the above was said about Office '95, '97, 2000, XP, 2003 and now 2007. Yeah, and Microsoft has yet to keel over and beg people to buy their software, contrary to that even; they keep getting better and making more money. Person is right, if you plan on buying the software legally then there's no problem now is there?

 

[bwana]

Been looking at openoffice for a while now but the mac version isnt up to scratch yet - I can live in hope.