Microsoft has made a number of things clear about next week's launch of Windows XP. First, retail buyers will be asked to go through its product activation scheme. Second, the larger corporates won't since it is unrealistic to expect them to re-register thousands of licenses every time there is an upgrade. This leaves the small to medium enterprise and, in particular, the extremely small enterprise - the sole trader and those with between one and five employees - who will have to activate each copy of the software they are running, and will need to reactivate it every time they replace or significantly alter their machine.
The concept of product activation is straightforward. The buyer of the software registers it electronically or by phone and Microsoft issues an activation code. Your software expires after a certain amount of uses unless you have entered the code, and this code contains information on the configuration of the computer you are using. That means you can't transfer it without re-activating your software, which will involve taking it off the old system.
The objective is to eliminate software piracy, which has long been a problem. Software companies lose sales when someone copies a program on to more than one computer. When there were plenty of people without PCs, new sales kept the corporate coffers full,even if some small traders and home users used the same disks to install programs on to multiple systems. Now that the majority of businesses have computers with software installed, Microsoft needs to recoup lost revenue from hooky copies wherever it can.
Not everyone in the small business community is happy with the new system. Peter Scargill, the national IT chairman for the Federation of Small Businesses, wonders whether Microsoft couldn't find better ways of persuading people to register legal software.
"If Microsoft Office was well paper-documented and cheap, they would not have such a problem with pirating as it would not be worth the effort," he says. "Offering better, free backup to registered users and a cheaper offering with decent paper documentation would be the answer."
In fact, "yes they had to do something, but not this" is a popular refrain among the small business community. Kelvin Hales, principal of the consulting control engineers Kelvin Hales Associates Ltd, is concerned that the license to use the software will remain tied to an individual computer rather than to an individual.
"For example: I run (but not simultaneously) three computers. Why do I need three licenses? I can only use one at a time!" he says. "Much engineering software, for example, allows multiple installation, provided only the licensed number of copies are in simultaneous use. Microsoft could have intro duced a transferable license key that could allow activation to be taken off one machine and installed to another at will." (Ironically a family in which two or more people use the system but not at the same time will need only the one licence).
Tim Kimber, product manager in Microsoft's small to medium business division, concedes there isn't an easy answer for cases such as Hales' if they stick to the single-license version of XP, but stresses that multiple installations are already a breach of the license agreement. The other area he admits will annoy some customers is the need to reactivate the software every time a computer is extensively reconfigured: it won't be an issue for many customers but Hales, at least, builds and rebuilds his PCs according to the job.
Kimber says the process is straightforward: "I did it over the web and thought it hadn't happened because it was so quick." Computers running offline can be activated over a free telephone number, and staff are trained to spot genuine cases in which reactivation will be appropriate. The company has no plans to stop activating older software, which would force people changing machines to upgrade.
Effectively, this forced registration will change the way people perceive software. At the moment they think of it like a book: you buy it, and if you want to lend it to someone, that's your business. Legally, software has always been licensed rather than bought and the activation process will do much to reinforce that perception.
