* Astronomy

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has written article in which he wonders if your operating system isn't broke, why 'fix' it? If what you're running now works for you, why should you move 'up' to Vista?
According to a study by Softchoice, 94 percent of PCs do not meet the system requirements for Vista Premium. It sounds to me like my friend isn't going to be the only one facing a major hardware upgrade.
There's also the question of what exactly you will be running on your Vista system, anyway. Mike Cherry, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, questions whether even a majority of the 1,000 applications that Microsoft is claiming as "Vista applications" were developed specifically for Vista, rather than simply being products that currently run on Windows XP and that should also run on Vista.

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Volume Activation 2.0 is one of the more controversial features of Vista: it means that every copy of Vista has to be activated, even the Business/Enterprise volume licenced editions.

However, to make life easier for administrators, Microsoft worked in a more convenient system of in-house for en masse activation of PCs called KMS – Key Management Service.
The idea behind KMS is that you have a single PC running KMS which can then handle activation for all your Vista clients, so that they don’t have to connect back to Microsoft every single time.
The downside of KMS is that the activation is only good for 180 days, to discourage people bringing in their home systems, activating them and wandering off again.
Bearing in mind that KMS wasn’t scheduled to be released until next year, pirates have managed to get hold of KMS and produce a standalone, fully-activated KMS server called “Windows Vista Local Activation Server – MelindaGates”. Tongue-in-cheek of course…the first “cracked” version of Vista was called Vista BillGates.
The download is a VMWare image, and the idea behind it is that you download and install VMWare Player (a legal free download), boot the image and use some VBS script (supplied with the activation server download) to have the client Vista machine get its activation from the local server. And that’s it – no communication back to Microsoft.

Of course, in line with the Volume Activation 2.0 model, this only works with Vista Business and Enterprise editions, as they are the only ones which will accept KMS keys.
Home and Ultimate editions still use normal single-use activation that calls back to Microsoft for validation of the product ID.
On one hand, this is strikes a serious blow to Vista’s activation model. Simply possessing the Vista DVD (which was released on the boards about two weeks ago) wasn’t enough to get you past the robust activation requirements. But if you can load up a local activation server and activate Vista that way, it sort of makes the whole thing redundant.

There are two caveats though. Vista still has to be installed with a KMS product key, so if that activated system ever goes through the WGA system with a known pirated key, Microsoft will be able to track it down and eventually close the loop.
The second is that this is a true KMS server, so the activation is only good for 180 days, then the client needs re-activation.
It’s also still not a crack. In this instance, as with the Vista BillGates release, it’s an activation workaround. Admittedly a very clever one, and one that Microsoft will have a lot more trouble stamping out, but the fact that it’s taken the acquisition of a KMS server shows that Vista activation is still holding strong in its own right.
But is that of any comfort to Microsoft right now, while its yet-to-be-widely-released OS is being pirated like crazy?

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-- Edited by Blobrana at 14:03, 2006-12-08

Microsoft Windows Vista and Office 2007 only just went gold, and their anti-piracy measures have already been cracked.
Various pirate websites have a version of Vista available to download, called "Vista BillGates".
It comes supplied with a product key, allowing users to install the operating system on their computers unhindered.
A second patch - a separate download, called an "activation crack" - must also be applied. This bypasses the activation process used by Vista to ensure that each installation is legitimate.
The same pirate sites also have Office 2007 Enterprise editions available for download. Users simply need to enter a supplied product key, since this version of Office does not require product activation.
Vista and Office 2007 went gold only last week, meaning that the code for their initial release has been finalised and released to manufacturing.
Mass-licence or business users of Vista will be able to buy a copy from November 30, while the release of the consumer edition is scheduled for January 30 next year.
Office 2007 will be available for purchase by consumers at the same time as Vista.
Microsoft declined comment for this story, but it will no doubt work quickly to stamp out the piracy of its products, which it should be able to do fairly easily.
Microsoft is capable of deactivating pirated copies by sending a patch through Windows Update, and it can also invalidate certain product keys.
The software giant has taken similar measures previously with Windows XP, preventing users that it had identified as using pirated versions from downloading certain updates such as Internet Explorer 7.

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Windows Vista Review
Part 3: Installing Windows Vista

While you will install Windows Vista in ways that are similar to previous Windows versions, under the covers, everything has changed. The DOS mode portion of Windows Setup, present even in the NT-based Windows variants such as Windows XP, is finally gone, exorcised from our lives for good. But the changes go much deeper than simple changes to Setup methodology. Microsoft has completely recast its approach for moving bits from an install medium (typically a Vista Setup DVD, but it could also be a network share or other location) to the PC's hard drive.

Dual-boot. If you're not sure how well Vista is going to work on your existing hardware, consider dual-booting between Windows Vista and your current OS. This method will provide you with a boot menu when you turn on your PC, letting you choose each time which system to use. Dual-boot is a great method of evaluating Windows Vista, but it comes with some complications. You must have an empty hard drive (or partition) to which you will install Windows Vista; you can't install two or more versions of Windows in a single partition. If you only have one partition, it's possible to resize it to accommodate the create of a new partition, but you'll need a special tool for that. What you're looking for is a non-destructive partitioning utility. I typically use PartionMagic, but there are other solutions out there as well.

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