Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make loopy. In computer stores up and down the UK, managers and salespersons are eagerly looking forward to Thursday. Why? Because on that day Microsoft officially launches Windows XP, the latest version of Bill Gates's license to print money.
The software has a fancy new interface, with snazzier colors and all kinds of ingenious short-cuts and bundled software for playing movies, MP3 files and streaming audio and video -- in a flagrant repetition of the aggressive software-bundling behavior that landed the company with an anti-trust suit.
XP is also a Trojan horse that enables Gates and a horde of even more unsavory folks to invade your privacy, exploit your computer and empty your wallet.
So why are all these idiots in computer stores drooling at the prospect? Answer: because Windows XP is a monstrous, bloated brute that requires a state-of-the-art PC and two gigabytes of hard disk space before it will even say "hello." This means any consumer foolish enough to want to run XP will probably have to buy a new PC.
At a time when sales have stagnated, this would seem to be great news for the hard-pressed computer industry. But possibly not. For one thing, XP is being launched into a world now sinking into recession, which means corporate IT managers may not take kindly to the notion of having to order hundreds of new PCs simply to run a version of Excel with cooler graphics when their users are perfectly happy with the old, uncool version.
Second, XP has some nasty surprises in store for its hapless purchasers. Chief among these is a fiendish new feature called "product activation." What this means is that even after you've purchased and installed the software, you have to contact Microsoft for permission to "activate" it.
How come? Well, during installation, XP surveys the PC's hardware and creates a 44-key code, which is a unique "fingerprint" of your system. This effectively locks the copy of XP to your hardware and has a number of interesting implications.
If you upgrade your hardware, for example, XP may "deactivate" and require you to call Gates for permission to reinstall. The same applies if you buy a new machine and desire to move your copy of XP to it. And so on.
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