Microsoft's new plan – black Windows

Meanwhile over in Redmond, Microsoft has an all-new plan to wean a little extra cash out of people still afflicted with the world’s dominant OS – irritate people until they cough up.

What?

Well, plan is that the company is doing some more of its famed Office Paperclip magic, changing Windows Genuine Advantage (which no one likes because the only genuine advantage it offers is to MSFT)…anyway, so the new look to combating piracy of the OS the company spent years pushing at people in order to make it pervasive means those using pirated copies of Windows (why pirate it, when  you can simply not use it?) can expect their desktop wallpaper to be replaced with a black screen every 60 minutes.

Also, to remind you that executives at the world’s biggest and richest software company need a few extra treats for the table come the next shareholder’s meeting, "copies of Windows deemed to not be genuine will also have a translucent watermark above the system tray, which Microsoft calls a ‘persistent desktop notification.’ Don’t you just love double-speak? "Persistent Desktop Notification sounds so much more grown-up than the old traditional expression, "pester message".

Oh and the scheme will be focused on the product edition that is most often stolen, Microsoft says, which – c’mon everyone, you know which one it is – is Windows XP (the version people actually prefer using because it almost works a bit).  By the way, can you even get a legitimage copy of XP anymore?

Now, while home users and persistent pirates will probably be able to handle this low-level irritation, we over here at 9to5Mac can’t help but feel this to be just Microsoft’s gentle way to tell business users with pirated software that it just might be a good idea to pay for XP (which they can’t) or upgrade to Vista (which they don’t want to). Wonder how many Mac sales Microsoft’s all-new approach to protecting its (now defunct) OS investment will generate?

And what about those of us who don’t want Vista and can’t buy XP?

Just a thought, anyway…

Via: CustomPC