Vista piracy the least of Microsoft's problems

ITWire.com isn't exactly a "friend" to Microsoft so you'd expect an article of this nature from them. On the other hand, the content is disturbing enough that it deserves a closer look. -Trip

Like thousands of other media commentators around the world, in January this year I attended the offical Microsoft launch of Windows Vista. In my show bag of goodies, among the press releases, I found shiny new boxed copies of the Ultimate versions of Vista and Office 2007. Since I didn't have a computer at the time that could run Vista, I loaned my copy to iTWire blogger Sam Varghese for a review. What happened next is most interesting. Like all dutiful reviewers, Sam did the right thing when he installed this brand new boxed copy of Vista. He registered and activated the copy. After he finished his review, he uninstalled his copy and returned it to me. A couple of months ago, I decided to upgrade my hardware and I bought a very high spec box that was capable of running just about anything. I installed Vista and Ubuntu in a dual boot configuration. Shortly after installing Vista, I received messages about having 30 days and counting down left to activate my copy of Vista...

It gets more interesting from there. Read the rest at ITWire.com.