Windows/Office XP Survey

Microsoft is enforcing its "one copy, one machine" license for Windows XP, Office XP, and Office 2000 by making a hardware fingerprint of your machine. Will this discourage you from upgrading to any of these products? For an upcoming story, we'd like your opinion.

Write us at newstips@pcworld.com.

Here's some background:

Although Microsoft's single-copy license agreements have long prohibited customers from installing a program on more than one machine, until recently there was no technical barrier to such so-called casual copying. New copy-protection schemes in Office 2000, Office XP, and Windows XP seek to halt this widespread practice, but may also create hassles for people who legitimately need to reinstall a product.

The Product Activation feature in Windows XP and Office XP is the most invasive effort to date to keep people from installing a single copy of either program on multiple machines, or lending an installation CD to several friends. When you perform an upgrade, Product Activation will inventory your system's hardware and use that data to create a unique "fingerprint" for your machine. Subsequent installations will fail on systems with a significantly different fingerprint--which could result from several simultaneous hardware upgrades. If this happens, you'd have to call Microsoft and convince a representative that you weren't engaging in software piracy.

Do you think you'll encounter problems with Product Activation, or have you already run into difficulties with Product Activation for Office 2000? Is it a reasonable means of license enforcement?

Do you think the strict one-copy-per-machine license is reasonable? If not, what would you prefer?

How will Product Activation affect your decision to upgrade to Windows XP or Office XP?

Write us at newstips@pcworld.com.