News Microsoft phasing out Windows Genuine Advantage

Unauthorised Vista activations are currently so easy to achieve, so maybe this will stop this?

But will it address all the problems legit users face if they try and allocate a key for use as a VM "sandbox" machine. By the very nature of such a machine you want to play with it, rebuild, re-config, restore etc and then activation becomes pain. That is why I know a lot of people use "activation hacks" to activate their own legal software without worrying about MS kicking up a storm.

This is a real issue for those with MSDN subs (or similar) where one key can be activated a given number of times. It's currently impossible to check the state of play on a key and whether it's been activated on multiple machines, multiple VM machines or even just one VM machine multiple times.

It's a farce!

 

MS says that "genuine advantage" allows MS to tell other software companies when their software is being used without license. "Genuine advantage" therefore must inventory all software present on users' computers. Such software inventories would benefit MS most, because MS would be able to determine which software is most widespread, and perhaps when the software was last run. MS thereby could select software packages for imitation, and markets for takeover.

Has this point been discussed? Thanks