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Office XP Controversy

Office XP includes a controversial new feature you can bet many users won't like. All versions of the suite sold as a shrink-wrapped package or on new PCs will be protected by Microsoft's Activation Wizard, a way to prevent unauthorized use of the software.

The company introduced the Activation Wizard method of installing software with some versions of Office 2000. The wizard allows you to use the suite 50 times without activating it with Microsoft. (Activation is a stripped-down form of registration that doesn't require your name or address.) If you fail to activate the suite by the 51st use, Office XP becomes a very expensive file viewer: You can read and print your documents, but you can't change them.

You can activate Office XP on only two computers, either over the Internet or by phone, and the process involves your providing two numbers to the company: the product identification code that comes with the software, and another code that the software itself generates once you load it onto your machine. That second code summarizes the configuration of your PC hardware--how large a hard drive and what kind of video card you have, and so forth.

If you load the software onto a third PC, Office recognizes that it's in another environment and prevents activation. This scheme also means that if you make "major" changes to your hardware (Microsoft refuses to say exactly what constitutes a major change), you'll have to call the company, explain the situation, and obtain a special code to reactivate the software.

Microsoft claims the Activation Wizard feature was designed to prevent what the company terms "casual copying"--users lending the software CD-ROM to friends. The company blames casual copying for half of all software piracy of Microsoft products, and it's understandable that the company would like to stop it. But its solution carries more than a whiff of Big Brother. Though Microsoft says the activation system doesn't identify users personally or gather data on the exact make and model of their computers or hardware, there is something unnerving about having to ask someone else's permission to use your own software if you upgrade your PC.

And we wonder what will happen if the system misbehaves. On one computer, our beta version of Publisher kept accusing us of modifying our hardware, though the machine hadn't changed a bit.

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