That is because Vista is crap and no one wants it!!

I think they meant.

"We developed a fool proof way to prevent pirates; we made an OS that nobody wants and is too resource heavy to work on hardware in areas like Asia where piracy is rampant."

It has been pirated less, because even if I was going to pirate Vista I wouldn't, it is not worth it. A Majority that knows how to pirate are going to pirate XP over Vista any day, Now when SP1 comes out then that might be a different story.

I think the reason why there is less piracy in Vista is because less people want it!!!! lol!

I got another theory for the reduced counterfeit rate: People simply don't want the new OS, hence they don't go out to the street and buy it counterfeit. If they wanted it, they'd get it, get it? Hahahahaha

Vista is such a piece of crap that nobody even wants to pirate it.

So if Vista sales are double XP and the piracy rate is half, I guess the same number of people who pirated XP are also pirating Vista. (It probably is the same people.) So all that money invested in DRM to stop the same people who will figure out how to do it anyway. Now we have yet another round of security added to Vista SP1. The irony is that M$ claims that legit copies won't be affected by pirates this time. They are starting to sound like a broken record.

Vista is so bad that even the Pirates stay away from it hehehe...

I'd be curious to see if their piracy rates increase over time as Vista becomes more in demand. No one wants that OS. It's a joke.

Wrong answer.

The real reason is that nobody wants vista.

There is very low demand for Vista to begin with, why bother with the trouble when in many situations XP is better.

Considering the interest in MS Vista is waning or not on par with XP, this is hardly a surprise. I'm not going to give the point to MS on this - I think people are just plain not as interested in it.

Why hassle? XP is holding good ground still.

That explains the rate.
I dumped vista for xp some time ago now.
Will never use it either.

Of course it isn't being counterfeited; nobody wants the damn thing, why would they pirate it?

Vista is so bad that people will not use it for free.

no one wants to pirate it not because of genuine advantage but the fact its a horable Operating system. Besides its easer to install linux than go through with cracking vista.

I wonder when MS will release a DX10 patch for xp...

No one wants Vista- it takes a gaming computer to run correctly and even then you never know if things will work. It's sad that Vista isn't even worth pirates' time to take. If all Microsoft is worried about is people pirating, then I'd say they are on the right track. Just make an OS that no one wants!

Vista doesn't have a high counterfit rate because no one wants to even steal it. Most of the geeks who go through the trouble to pirate operating systems are the ones who will say how Vista sucks and how XP can do everything Vista can do. But, Microsoft's data on WGA has already been proven to be inaccurate and either biased or blind, so it's a moot point.

fewer people want Vista?

Vista is just as easy to crack/hack as XP...It's just that the people that are into that would rather use XP and not Vista.

Isn't the fact that lower rates of piracy are the direct result of the fact that no one wants Vista?

It would actually appear that Vista is 50% more despised then XP, so people continue to pirate that instead.

This should be more of an indication that Vista is a failure... because it is just as easy to hijack as XP is.

Is it Vista's more advanced security thwarting would-be hacks or is it a lack of interest in the product!? I would say it is the former.

Of course the Counterfeit rate is lower. No one wants Vista desperately enough to pirate it.

1. Another way to spin this story is to say, "People hate Vista so much, that they aren't even TRYING to steal it.

2. In response to the last line of the article: What? Exactly how can a person with a legit install be affected by a "pirate" with a different machine? That's just ridiculous.

A likely scenario is that Vista's authentication hassle outweighs any slim advantages it could have over XP, so there is much less interest in installing pirate versions of the OS.

I think maybe they're brainstorming on how to promote Vista so that anyone will use it. Pirates are good if it gets more people talking about Vista being good or even "okay". I think maybe they're realizing that pirates are sort of the early adopters too. You could think of this as giving away free copies of Vista if you can demonstrate a certain amount of acumen.

Why would any one want a beta operating system when xp is way better and easy to pirated a copy? It is easy to see why it is half of xp plus it hasnt been out that long.

/*
Customers want to know the status of their systems, and how to take action if it turns out they were victimized," according to Microsoft VP Mike Sievert.
*/

Actually, I don't. I bought my (one, for trial) Vista system from Dell, and I don't want to EVER spend any cycles (human or CPU) trying to figure out if I have a valid license. Ever.

And hooray, SP1 is going to change my experience. Imagine my excitement.

They can try to spin this any way they want, but I, as an end user (remember them?) am gaining absolutely nothing from this continual quest to prove that I have a valid license. Not even the satisfaction of knowing that piracy is down and my price is supposedly lower because of it. That's only true if my time is worth absolutely nothing, which appears to be Micro$oft's stance.

Mircosoft can "try" and prevent counterfeit copys of Vista, yet the reason why no one counterfeits them is because Vista is awful no one wants Vista.

the #'s are only half because true priates know that vista is broke and dont want to switch to it...

Windows Vista is a piracy deterrent by virtue of itself. Who would pirate an operating system no one wants?

Sure Microsoft makes it sound that their software is "good" and it's harder to steal, when really its just that nobody wants to run that crap (vista) on their computers--thus less pirated copies....they also left out that vista has only been out less than a year, and XP came out in 2000-2001 so it has had 6-7 years on the market versus Vista.

...wants it.

"The service pack will also help prevent users with legitimate installs from being affected by Vista pirates."

What does this mean exactly? ROTFL

Who would want to counterfeit VISTA ?? XP is a more popular and less resource hungry OS than VISTA. Vista is still buggy and very demanding on the computers resources. XP sales still remain very healthy and VISTA sales keep declining. In a situation like this, who would want to counterfeit VISTA?

"Microsoft claims that its next-generation operating system is more robust at preventing counterfeit attempts." Yep! No one wants it so this explains things!

"Customers want to know the status of their systems, and how to take action if it turns out they were victimized"

If you bought Vista you were victimized by Microsoft!

Or, it could just be that vista is a horrible OS and no one is TRYING to pirate it...

Vista has half of the customer base XP had at this point in its lifetime among legit customers, too. Why would the customer base be any different in the piracy world than in the buyer's world?

Aside from that, why would one bother with copying Vista vs. XP? It's sluggish and DRM'd to the teeth. If I were a counterfeiter, I'd avoid Vista so that it would be faster and less annoying to do the things I wanted to do with my system. So far Vista doesn't have anything going for it at all (all of you who will reply to my comment saying "except for DirectX 10" ought to do some research first) and so far its biggest achievement is to piss off legitimate users.

I don't even like XP's restrictions. I have to run an "at" or "runas" command to kill some of the processes in the process tree, or download an external program. I should be able, as the admin, to kill anything I want, system stability be damned. I own my computer and it should do anything I tell it to do, bar none. Vista is just another attempt by M$ and the content mafia to restrict our rights. Why would a software pirate even bother with that?

So to summarize, DUH. Thanks for the information, Captain Obvious...

It could also be an indicator, of how little impact Vista has made towards the business world's IT strategy, as well as the average consumer's 'must have' shortlist. Given the familiarity & stability of XP since it's introduction, and the lack of Vista drivers the high upgrade costs associated with Vista's deployment, it seems that they are having a hard time giving it away, much less charging for it.

Another reason I'll never install Vista. After XP dies for good I'll more to a differt OS. Vista is not in my future. But who knows, in 5 years after I'm done with XP maybe Microsoft will change its ways. Doubt it, but you never know.

why pirate something that is inferior to it's predecessor?

There's a joke I remembered when I read this article, about uncatchable Joe:

a group of cowboys sitting in the bar. Suddenly someone dashes into the bar, runs around and dashes out. New cowboy asks: "who is that?" - "this is Uncatchable Joe, nobody ever managed to catch him!" - "why did noone catch him?" - "who would bother doing that?.."

What this fails to mention is that Vista still has a significantly less market share than XP, and I would bet that the kinds of people who would want illegit copies of windows are content with XP, and likely will be with the upcoming release of SP3.

It's simple economics: If pirates can use XP without having to worry about the problems with cracking Vista, then they will always prefer the substitute good that (1) they already have and (2) is pretty much the same thing, if not better.

People steal software they want. Most people don't want Vista, it just comes bundled with hardware, so of course there aren't going to be as many pirated copies. You don't see people pirating software to install that stupid paperclip office assistant either.

And there haven't been any dog poop thefts in years... Of course no one is bootlegging it, it's garbage. MS mus have been hit on the collective head to tout a stat like this. Like a car manufacturer stating taht thier cars are the least stolen. "Wow, even criminals don't want them."

Sure, the piracy rate is down for Vista, why go to the extra trouble of pirating software that doesn't work anyway?
:P

...because nobody actually *wants* to pirate Vista, much less buy it.

*ehm* I don't think the lack of Vista Piracy is because of improved security... ;)

This makes me laugh, most pirates wouldn’t touch Vista with a 10 foot pole, cracking the OS is easy, but any good pirate knows that windows vista is the crappiest OS out there. It looks like Microsoft puked up all over the hard drive. Its less stable, it uses more resources, and it is slower. Do you really think a hacker would want gui interface over performance? Did you think making Direct X 10 run only on Vista would convince anyone to change over to the new os? DirectX 9.0 L is simply a renamed and refurbished DirectX 10 for Windows XP. It will make DirectX 10 games to work on Windows XP.

Vista isn't immune to pirating. Just nobody wants it. I don't see why they spend so much time trying to prevent pirating of this operating system.

Just about every computer sold comes with Windows even if you don't want it. So the make their money. Exactly who would pirate it anyway? A hand full of people who build their own systems.

It can't be installed in older computers because it's too large. People who are buying low end computers with legitimate copies are complaining about it being too slow. Takes fifteen minutes just to boot up. It's becoming too cumbersome to use.

Till someone who know what they are doing gets a hold of it.... Where there is a will there is a way.

Well, Duh! Why would even thieves want to steal a completely non useable OS that would require them to upgrade their hardware? Not everyone drinks the koolaid. MS has a loser here, and should just decide that they really are in the Software Business, and not the OS business.

my .02 cents worth.

...is that nobody really WANTS Vista. Why bother when XP is good enough?

...hell is this supposed to mean?
"The service pack will also help prevent users with legitimate installs from being affected by Vista pirates."
I wonder what garbage it will be this time...

I wonder if anyone thinks Vista is inferior. I just can't tell; there aren't enough comments.

Whenever I her that term used, I just want to scream. It means that the organization is viewing things from ten thousand feet, and not from the ground. Reality is on the ground, where the troops have their boots.

How they would even know such info. If it is cracked, then it is not phoning home, or it is cracked but we want to know how many is cracked, or it is cracked but we cannot disable the functionality or or or or our sale is so down WE WANT you think it is GOOOoood_ OS, please customers, buy our product, we wont be able to make more crap

Perfect time for google to release OS

I just wonder if the guys that wrote the press release really believe that Vista's security is the reason for the lack of piracy. Or, are they sitting around having a few laughs right now wondering if anyone bought their story?

If these guys truly believe that DRM is preventing this, we are all in a heap o' trouble. They'll just keep piling it on.

All you need is a copy with a VLK and you're in. And the pirates are way beyond that. All DRM does is keep honest people from being able to use the product in a fair use manner.

All WGA does is waste my time, at best. At worst, who knows what information is being sent to MS from my computer when I update? Or what they're putting on my computer?

Linux - Live Free or Die!

however, no one wants to use it, not even here in manila.

Heh, and they completely ignore the bit in Vista Ultimate and higher editions that Microsoft put there to aid large IT departments, which can be fooled into allowing the trial to last 99 years. MS really blew this one, badly, you don't even have to 'pirate' the OS, just borrow a friend's disc, set your comp clock in the BIOS to 2099, install, reset date to 2007. Vista never knew what hit it.

Fuckers.

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRgh! You can keep your bloody Vista and give me Winders XP or I'll make you walk the plank! RRRRRRRRRRRRRgh!