Things to check before switching to Vista Part 3

Welcome to the third part in my Things to check before switching to Vista series. The last two articles dealt with possible hardware and software incompatibilities and ways to check whether your hard- and software would run in Windows Vista. It is imminent to check this before you make the switch. Just imagine that you make the switch and a program that you run on a daily basis will not install or run properly.

Today we are going to take a look at a function of Vista that most people could live without: WGA. You do know that XP introduced WGA which stands for Windows Genuine Advantage. You can still run XP without problems even if the WGA check should fail. A nagscreen is the only thing that appears afterwards and it is no problem to disable it. Vista will introduce a new level. If the WGA check fails Vista will reduce the functionality.

Vista will only run in Reduced Function Mode and many features will not be available anymore:

By choosing Access your computer with reduced functionality, the default Web browser will be started and the user will be presented with an option to purchase a new product key. There is no start menu, no desktop icons, and the desktop background is changed to black. The Web browser will fully function and Internet connectivity will not be blocked. After one hour, the system will log the user out without warning. It will not shut down the machine, and the user can log back in. Note: This is different from the Windows XP RFM experience, which limits screen resolution, colors, sounds and other features.

A crippled system which should not be that of a problem if only pirated copies of Vista were affected. We all know that this will not be the case. We all read about legit copies of XP who failed WGA checks with no one being able to fix this problem. It is most likely that at least some legit copies of Vista will be affected by this phenomenon as well.

The new WGA could indeed do something good for the growth of free operating systems like Linux. The question that you have to ask yourself if you face such a situation: Do I want to buy Vista for hundreds of dollars or do I want to try a free operating system instead and save the money ? Some will buy Vista because they want to play the latest games but all the others, who are not that interested in games but working with their pc - will they buy Vista ? I doubt so.

A great opportunity for Linux.