Pirated Software

I often come across people who are surprised to find that they have pirated software on their computers.

The Good Samaritan

Sometimes their disk drive fails and a friendly neighbour reinstalls for them using “their” copy. This is made more likely because many computers are sold without installation media.

The Dodgy Dealer

But more often I find that computers have been supplied with illegal copies of XP or Microsoft Office. In rough terms this means that £100 hasn’t been paid for XP Professional and £400 for Office Professional.

Now my point isn’t to say that such suppliers are wicked and cheats (which they are) but to point out that they are not only cheating Microsoft, who can probably afford it, but also cheating you. Because you, the unfortunate end user, will almost definitely have problems further down the line.

When Microsoft “notices” that you have a pirated copy of XP you start getting nagged. Some updates stop happening and of course you can’t get support if you need it. The last time I helped someone to get legal it cost about £100 to get a valid license key.

For home users having Office Professional is just plain overkill. Having a pre-release version which can never be updated is just daft when OpenOffice is for most purposes indistinguishable from Microsoft Office and costs precisely nothing.

This is not victimless

Software piracy has three victims: Microsoft, people that do things properly and you.

OK so how does one know if the software is genuine?

Well the simple answer is that it has a COA. This is what Microsoft has to say about COAs:

A Certificate of Authenticity (COA) is a label that helps you identify genuine Microsoft software. Without it, you will not have a legal licence to run Microsoft software. A COA is not a software licence – it is a visual identifier that assists in determining whether or not the Microsoft software you are running is genuine. A COA should never be purchased by itself without the software it authenticates.

So what does one look for?

A Windows XP Retail COA looks like this:

Retail COA

A Windows XP System Builder COA can look like either of these:

OEM Software COA

The top COA is for large system builders. This is what you should see if you buy from a store like PC World.

The bottom COA is for small system builders. That is mostly system builders that make to order.

When purchasing an XP computer it should have one of these attached to the case. There are several variations which can be seen on the What is a Certificate of Authenticity (COA)? page.

The operating system COA should usually be placed on the case: COA placement