This was sent in to us by GCC member Bob Young:
"Looks like MS is going to make life miserable for those
that use a "borrowed" copy of their XP operating system.
I think that it will force most people to purchase it."
Changes to Product Activation
Microsoft's controversial Windows Product Activation (WPA)
technology is also seeing two minor modifications in XP SP1,
neither of which will affect any legitimate users. First,
the company discovered that the majority of pirated XP copies
out there are tied to single volume license product key. So
Microsoft has alerted the company about the problem, changed
their key, and disabled it for use after SP1. So anyone using
this pirated key will be unable to upgrade to SP1 or any future
updates via Windows Update, Sullivan said.
Also, Microsoft is adding a three-day grace period for people
that use the same product key to install XP on two different
systems; in the past, there was no grace period and the user
had to immediately activation via phone in order to use XP on
the second system. This will give users some breathing room if
disaster strikes and you have to install XP on a new system.
"The impact on valid licenses is zero," Sullivan said.
This is the full article on the update.
http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/windowsxp_sp1_preview.asp