Next week's launch of Office 2007 and Windows Vista will introduce a perplexing new feature: Reduced-functionality mode. Businesses that don't keep their software licenses up to date will find that their Microsoft applications and operating systems will go dim, if not properly activated or validated.


When Microsoft announced new anti-piracy mechanisms last month, the company revealed details about Windows Vista and forthcoming Windows Server "Longhorn." But Microsoft will apply similar authenticity checks to some business applications. Functionality will throttle down if the software is not verified as being, in Microsoft parlance, "genuine."

Besides Windows, reduced-functionality mode is baked into 2007 versions of Office (including Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word), OneNote, Project, Publisher, SharePoint Designer and Visio.

Two separate but related online checks can trigger reduced-functionality mode. The first, product activation failure, applies to Office and Windows. Office 2007 must be activated within 25 uses, otherwise functionality greatly diminishes such that the software is unusable.

Microsoft-Watch