The Redmond company, which has a lot of respect for its users, doesn't want to see them struggling to find out whether the software on their systems is genuine or not.

For this reason, Microsoft announced yesterday the OGA (Office Genuine Advantage) initiative, through which users will be able to determine if their Office version is genuine. The program will initially be piloted in seven languages: Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Greek, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Russian and Spanish.

Aside from the OGA, the software behemoth also announced the expansion of the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) pilot program that provides notifications to consumers using non-genuine Microsoft Windows XP.

The Windows Genuine Advantage program was launched in July 2005 and the first phase of the notifications included Norway and Sweden; in 2006, it was followed by five additional countries and it will now be introduced to customers in the U.S., United Kingdom, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand.

"The best way to protect consumers is, first, to educate them about the issue, then to equip them to spot counterfeit software, and finally, to help them understand what they should do about it," said Cori Hartje, director of the Genuine Software Initiative.

According to Microsoft, once the "Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications" tool is installed, users running a counterfeit copy will be notified at startup, login and during the session.

The message that will help users see the 'genuine' light will say this: "This copy of Windows is not genuine; you may be a victim of software counterfeiting."