14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft's anti-piracy efforts will undertake a major overhauling. The Redmond company plans to take down both the Windows Validation Assistant and the Office Validation Assistant. However, Microsoft is going to fill in the empty spaces left by the discontinuing of WVA and OVA with Windows Comparison Guide (WCG) and the Office Comparison Guide (OCG). Additionally there is also the old trust Windows Genuine Advantage and Office Genuine Advantage that will survive the anti-piracy cancelled services. Still, this is not the end of the upgrades in stored for the Microsoft anti-piracy programs. Feature updates and additions are also planned to be introduced.
"We're finally taking down both the Windows Validation Assistant and the Office Validation Assistant. The WVA was a prototype for WGA; it was the first tool launched that offered a web-based validation that could help find evidence that a copy wasn't genuine that otherwise might be hard for the average person to find (such as bad or leaked product keys, etc.) The good news is that we're replacing the WVA with the Windows Comparison Guide (WCG) and the Office Comparison Guide (OCG). These guides offer much of the same functionality as the WVA did by walking users through a quiz that helps them match the anti-piracy features of the products they have, but without the web-based validation. For that we're pointing people directly to WGA," revealed Alex Kochis, a senior licensing manager on the WGA team.
The revamping is an integer part of the updating process impacting the How to Tell website. The online resources made available via How to Tell are designed to deliver users with information on the anti-piracy features integrated in Microsoft's products in order to guarantee that they are genuine. "This release marks the eighth major update in the site's history and includes some features I'm pretty excited about launching. The whole site has been updated with a new interface that has an updated look and feel, and the page real estate has increased to 1024x768. We have also added about 200 product entries to the catalog, so we're up to about 600 products now. The catalog is as big as it is because each product may have a different set of anti-piracy features depending upon how it is sold," Kochis added.