First of all, I received an upgrade copy of Office XP Professional version as a thank you for attending a seminar in Redmond, Washington on Windows XP and participating in the Expert Zone program. After I returned, the box sat and stared at me from my shelf for weeks until I found some free time recently to install it. Luckily, I had Office 2000 Professional already on my system, as the software looks to see if you are in compliance before installing. It will look on the hard drives for qualifying previous versions, and if it does not find one, from past experience it will politely ask you to insert your Office CD. I should state that I was installing this on a Dell XPS T600 with 256 MB RAM running the Windows 2000 operating system. Windows 2000 saves me a lot of time when installing software, because it very seldom needs to be re-booted.
I had taken the precaution of backing up my mail and address book before installing. I inserted the CD. The first screen informed me that the software was getting ready to install. Soon the User Information screen came up asking the usual questions: User name, organization and please type your 25-character product key. After doing so, and double-checking the letters and numbers, I hit next. Immediately, the End User License Agreement (EULA) popped up. Now I know many of us never read these things, as they are long, convoluted, and full of lawyer talk, but it is really a good idea to at least skim them before accepting the terms. Basically, I was granted a right to install one copy of the software on my desktop and one copy on my laptop providing I was the primary user of both, and also granted the right to keep a back-up copy, namely the original installation CD. Now this Office Pro license is basically the same as it has been for some years. So what is the big fuss? Well, for the first time, Microsoft is requiring Activation so that you will not only be aware of the EULA, but the software itself will enforce it. If you have been doing anything other than what I have previously mentioned, you have been (perhaps unintentionally) breaking the legal agreement.
What is Product Activation (PA) anyway? Including Office Product Activation (OPA) and Windows Product Activation (WPA), Product Activation is an anti-piracy technology that was designed to verify that a product has been legitimately licensed. Microsoft will be including Product Activation in several versions of its software including MS Office XP, (and single apps like Word 2002), Windows XP, Visio 2002 and Microsoft Project 2002. PA will be required both in retail packaged products and in new PCs purchased from a manufacturer. OEMs [Original Equipment Manufacturers] may pre-activate the software supplied with the computer so that you won’t have to. If you have a business, whether non-profit or not, you can participate in MS volume licensing programs such as Open License or Select License. Product Activation is not required for such licenses. Even the smallest of businesses may qualify for the Open License program by acquiring as few as five product licenses. Microsoft is talking about making it even easier by allowing you to “mix and match” Office XP and Windows XP to meet the 5 license requirement, however this is not “set in stone” as of yet. The license programs also offer the software at a discount.
The next screen gave me the option to choose the type of installation I needed. UPGRADE NOW was in big bold letters. “Setup will remove your previous versions and install the new version based on your current configuration.” The options were: “Or choose an install type: Typical, Complete, Custom”. If you are not sure about the new version, or wish to keep the old version, you should choose Custom install. In the Custom Install window you can select the applications you would like installed, and choose detailed installation options for each application. Next, I was allowed to keep or remove previous versions of Office applications, with the exception of Outlook. Previous versions of Outlook must be removed to install the 2002 version. Space required for the common install: 145MB. Once the software begins installing it only seems to take about 5 minutes.
So far the installation was painless. To experiment, I had used the custom option and selected both Word 2000 and Access 2000 as programs I wanted to keep the original versions of, while also installing the new versions. Not only that, but I let the installer use the “default directory” just as I did in the previously installed Office 2000. [Drum roll, ominous music]. Now that the installer was finished, I decided to see how well that worked. My desktop looked exactly the same as before, so I clicked on the quick-launch shortcut for Access on the task bar to see what would happen. This shortcut originally led to the old version, and I was not disappointed! My old trusty Access 2000 came up without a problem, and I closed it. Next, I looked in the Start Menu for the shortcut for the new Access. Interestingly, I only found one shortcut leading to the new Access 2002. As the program opened, nothing happened at first, but then a second Windowpane opened up over the top of it. Microsoft Office XP Professional Activation Wizard. “This wizard will guide you through the product activation process. You have not yet activated your copy of Microsoft Office XP Professional. This product will run 49 more times before you will be required to activate it. For more information, click the help button.” Beneath this warning were two clickable selections: “Activate by using the Internet” and “Activate by using the telephone. If you are not already connected, the Microsoft Office Activation Wizard will use your default Internet connection to process your information. Or, you can connect to the Internet manually and then continue with the wizard. If you do not have access to the Internet, choose the option to use the telephone”. At the bottom of the pane there is a “Help” button that brings up more information, a “Next” button, to go on with the wizard and “Activate Later”. Clicking on the last choice, gave me one more window: “Are you sure you want to exit? You have not yet activated…” clicking on “Exit” takes me out of the activation wizard.
What happens if you get busy and don’t activate the software? Office XP will give you 50 chances to activate it, and will actually count down every time you open a program in the suite. In addition, if you do not activate it during that time it will go into Reduced Functionality Mode. In RFM, you will still be able to read your documents, but you will not be able to save or change them until you activate. None of your documents or files are harmed in any way, the program simply becomes a “read only” product. You can easily get Office out of this mode and back into production by following the activation procedure in the screens provided.
Installation results. Starting Outlook 2002 for the first time gave me a pleasant warm tingly feeling. Why? Because I could shortly see that the installation had imported all my mail, clients, contacts, drafts, archive folders and even the deleted items. Here’s how it went. After the activation window popped up and I dismissed it without activating, Outlook popped up a window of it’s own: “Outlook has detected a new account, would you like to import it? This new account was found in Outlook Express. It may have been configured automatically by your Internet Service Provider, or you may have set up the account yourself. If you would like Outlook to use this account, it is necessary to import the account first.” Well, I had no idea what the program was talking about, as I didn’t use OE for anything but a newsreader. But I hit “Yes” and the window cleared. It turned out to be a Symantec Fax program that uses email. Then I took a look at what I had.
Wow! Outlook 2002 not only flawlessly brought in my hundreds of folders and many megabytes of stored mail, but it also imported my distribution lists intact. I love it already. Not only that, but I can save a distribution list as an RTF, TXT, outlook template OFT or message format MSG in case I have to send it to a colleague. Looking at some of my mail, I now notice a new yellow message box that says “You replied on 7/2/2001 12:32 PM. Click here to find all related messages. Extra line breaks in this message were removed. To restore, click here.” When I click on the yellow message, I get an Advanced Find dialog box… wow again! With no effort on my part, I am seeing a pane with every related email message to the one I was originally looking at. Outlook had seamlessly searched every folder in a few seconds!
As part of my installation checks, I took a look under Tools/Email Accounts in Outlook, where you can view or change accounts. You can also add accounts, and here is where I discovered another must-have feature. You can now easily add Exchange Server, POP3, IMAP, HTTP or Additional server accounts. HTTP is the one that is likely to interest many of you, as you can now connect to an HTTP email server such as Hotmail to download email and synchronize mailbox folders within Outlook! The accounts are added to your mail folders list in the left pane. The access to my Hotmail Web mail is now blindingly fast, no more maddeningly slow interface. Since I have 3 hotmail accounts, this is heaven for me. Well some of this belongs in a more in-depth review of Office XP, so I won’t go any farther, but I have to say these are real time-saver, got-to-have features.
Next, I tried Word from the same taskbar. Ooops. Here, I ended up with Word 2002. Now Word 2002 has a lot of great features I won’t go into here, but I was testing to see if I would still have access to my old version of Word. Looking at either the Quick Launch Task Bar or the Start menu only gave me a link to Word 2002. So what happened to, and where is my old version?
A little investigation of the FrontPage 2000 and Publisher 2000 short cuts left on the Quick-Launch task bar, worked well and took me to the original Office 2000 applications. However, they led me to discover that when Office XP installed to its “default directory”, it set up a \Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10\ directory, leaving certain Office 2000 apps in the \Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\ directory. The applications stored in the \Office\ directory were those I had requested the installer to save during installation (Word 2000 and Access 2000), and also those not included with the new Office XP Pro software, namely FrontPage 2000 and Publisher 2000. So it was simply a matter of finding the Winword.exe program in the Office folder and clicking on it.
Surprise! Word 2000 was no longer installed! However, with no help from me, in a few seconds, the program re-installed itself on demand and gave me the familiar Word 2000 interface. I suspect that with all the goodies in Word XP, I am not going to be using Word 2000 much if at all, but this was a good test. Although Office XP appeared to be gently nudging me to the much-enhanced new version, it still passed with flying colors when I insisted on using the old one.
Product Activation. Now in Windows 2000, I very seldom re-boot or close applications that I use all the time. They are constantly running 24 hours a day. So in order to activate the software, I just clicked on the help menu in Outlook and chose Product Activation. I could have also closed and re-opened a program or started up a different one in the suite as well. At this point, I had all kinds of folders, programs and the kitchen sink open and running on the desktop, a typical work environment for me. I started a stopwatch to see how long it would take me to activate. I was already on the Net. The screens went something like this: “The only customer information needed to activate this product, is the country/region where the product will be used. Personal contact information is not required. Registering is an option. Microsoft will process and store this information in the U.S. Find more on privacy policies in Office Help”. A customer information form popped up asking for information in case I wanted to register my product including name, address, etc. However, all I had to do at that screen was use a drop down menu and pick my country of origin. The menu choice is the first line in the form and has a star beside it with an explanation that the COO is the only info required. Next, I was asked if I wanted to be notified of product updates, or offers from MS, or from 3rd parties. Each was a separate opt-in choice. I selected product updates, and gave them my hotmail account. I was not required to select any of them. Next, I was informed that the job was done: “Activation Complete”. The whole thing, including my typing these rough notes, took 5 minutes on a 56K connection.
How does Product Activation work? PA works by validating that the software’s product key, [required as part of product installation], has not been used on more PCs than is allowed by the software’s license. Product key information, in the form of the product ID, is sent along with a “hardware hash” [an anonymous number generated from your PC’s hardware configuration] to Microsoft’s activation system during activation. The hash used during activation is a combination of hash values of various PC components in your system, and cannot be used to determine the make or model of your PC. Also, it cannot be backward –calculated to determine the raw PC hardware information. No personal information or hardware information is transmitted in the 50 digit coded number.
PA has also been designed to allow you to add to, or upgrade your system without triggering re-activation in most cases. If you re-format or replace your hard drive, you will have to re-activate because the activation information is stored on the hard drive. However, you can uninstall and re-install the software as many times as you want without triggering re-activation, and will be able to add RAM, upgrade a video card, add a second hard drive or upgrade your CD-ROM. The hardware changes are cumulative, so if you make too many changes, you may be asked to re-activate, but most people do not change their systems substantially during ownership. The software checks itself from time to time to see if it is still on the same PC, but no information is transmitted to Microsoft except for the hash number during Activation. Activation is completed either directly via the Internet, or by a toll-free telephone call to a 24/7 customer service representative if you do not have an Internet connection.
You may activate the software on the same PC as many times as you need to, activation is unlimited. However, PA was designed to discourage casual piracy by limiting the number of times a product key can be activated on different PCs. For Office XP, you may install one copy on your PC and another on a laptop computer for your exclusive use. If you need to install to another PC however, you will need to purchase another license. However, if you acquired Office XP preinstalled on a new PC by an OEM, the license is a single-PC license that cannot be transferred or installed a second time on another PC or laptop. [In this case, the cost of the software is usually much less expensive than buying it over the counter, probably because there is no laptop license]. Activation is separate from registration. You can activate your software without registering. If you fill out the registration, you will receive future notices on product updates, service releases and other special offers, but it is not required.
In conclusion, Microsoft appears to have designed Activation to be as painless as possible to the majority of users while still addressing the problem of piracy by casual copying, disk-swapping or “softlifting”. Why is Microsoft doing this? Is casual copying really a problem? What is it exactly? Casual copying is the sharing of a single copy of software between different people and machines. For example, if one person bought Office XP, loaded it onto their computer and then shared the program with a friend who then loaded it on his computer, this would be considered piracy. Even though we like to think of software pirates as gangs burning CDs in back rooms and selling them on street corners, experts estimate that considering all forms of piracy, casual copying or “softlifting” between friends, family, students, business colleagues, etc. accounts for 50% of the total cases of piracy and is a very serious problem for software companies. The other forms of piracy such as hard-disk loading [computer dealers installing unauthorized copies on computers they sell], counterfeiting, bulletin board piracy [software available by download] and so called “software rentals” [where software is illegally rented to end users who copy the software to their machines and then return the copy to the renter] make up the other 50% and together add up to an estimated 11 to 12 billion dollars lost annually worldwide. Is this a problem that affects you and I? In a word, yes.
Note to APCUG editors: This article was first published in the August issue of the Bytes and Bits Newsletter. I thought it might have broad interest for the UG community. Please drop me an email if you publish this article to: barbara@web-centric.net. I would be very pleased to receive either a link to your online publication, PDF, or a hard copy of your newsletter if possible. I enjoy seeing what everyone else is doing, thanks. If this article is too long, please feel free to break it up into 2 or 3 parts at appropriate points if that would work better for you.
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