M'zoft has taken authentication of the M'zoft Validation to a whole new level. Starting now, they will be checking your operating system every month. Now, I'm not saying this development is bad or good. I'm just wondering what impact this has on our daily lives. Ever since I received an email stating this new policy I've been wondering why M'zoft felt the need to validate each copy of Windows every month and have come up with a couple of reasons why...

First, I'm sure that each month they uncover more and more previously activated Product Key's and therefore as they find out about them, they deactivate the key codes that look like they're pirated. What this means to you is that you need to be vigilant to follow M'zoft's license agreement and only have one computer running one license at a time. If you have two computers and activated the second computer by calling M'zoft to get around the online activation failure, they will be able to detect that 2 different computers are running off of one license and shut both down. There go any critical updates and extras you would otherwise get by staying legal.

Second, it gives M'zoft the opportunity to poll your hardware configuration each month. This allows them not only to see if your license is running on different computers but also gives them a general idea of what Windows users use hardware-wise. They'll know when you change video cards, motherboards, CPUs, add memory, etc. Is this a big deal? That's not for me to say. I don't mind but I'm sure there are people who would mind. With this information they can aggregate the data and sell it to companies who use that type of information and/or build new software programs that can take advantage of new hardware once they know there is a greater number of users who can run the new software, thus optimizing their ability to sell software.

One of the potential impacts I see is bandwidth. If M'zoft is checking every Windows user every month then that is however many millions of checks that get sent to Redmond, WA. Doing it once per install is one thing but now this number of checks gets multiplied by 12. Could have an impact on their bottom line at the very least, and they'll of course pass this cost on to it's customers...meaning a higher cost of software in the future.