There are a lot of myths surrounding the Digital Right Management capabilities introduced in Windows Vista. There have been claims that the DRM in Windows Vista will result in slow system performance, system instability, technical support overhead, and additional hardware and software cost.

This is as far from the truth as possible. Windows Vista DRM will not incur additional costs and will not cause the operating system to be instable. The only thing it will do in this regard is increase CPU resource consumption.

"However, the use of additional CPU cycles is inevitable, as the PC provides consumers with additional functionality. Windows Vista's content protection features were developed to carefully balance the need to provide robust protection from commercial content while still enabling great new experiences such as HD-DVD or Blu-Ray playback," revealed Dave Marsh, a Lead Program Manager responsible for Windows' handling of video.

But probably the most widespread myth is associated with the fact that the Windows Vista DRM will impact non-protected content. This is also not true. The fact of the matter is you have to think of Windows Vista as an operating system with an infrastructure that supports commercial content scenarios and unprotected content concomitantly.

And in fact users will be able to play protected and unprotected content simultaneously. The DRM will only apply when required by the policy of the materials being played, and it is restricted to those materials. This means that you will be able to play a HD DVD movie and listen to your ripped MP3s, or play a generic piece of video at the same time. Only the commercial content will be impacted by the constraints, the additional unprotected content concurrent with the restricted materials will not be affected.