When Microsoft Vista Service Pack 1 ships sometime in early 2008, it will strip away one of Vista’s most annoying features and remove one of the most persistent objections to Vista’s adoption. Microsoft plans to remove the infamous “kill switch” from
Windows Vista when SP1 is installed, restoring the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program to its original role as a series of persistent but nonlethal notifications.
Senior product manager Alex Kochis laid out the changes for a handful of reporters and analysts: Based on customer feedback, we will not reduce user functionality on systems determined to be non-genuine
This suggets that the WGA team has finally realized that they need to react forcefully to a year of embarrassing WGA glitches, server outages, and nonstop customer complaints.
In the current retail copies of Vista, there are dire consequences for failing to activate a retail copy of Windows Vista after 30 days or ignoring the three-day “grace period” when a system falls out of tolerance after too many hardware changes. When
the timer runs out, the desktop turns black and its icons disappear and the Start menu vanishes. You can copy your personal data files, but you can’t open them, and you’re granted the right to use Internet Explorer for one hour before being forcibly
logged off.
In its post-SP1 incarnation, the penalty for ignoring these activation notices is … more activation notices. The most annoying change is an Activate Now dialog box that forces you to wait 15 seconds before the matching Activate Later option is available
to be clicked.
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