While I have found many objections to this new system at present time, and will refuse to upgrade my own systems for the time being, I must truthfully admit that this new system was very easy to operate and had some really nice features, including the ability to transfer your old computer's files and settings across a network, removal drive or other means to your new PC and incorporate those into your XP system. In practice, perhaps because I found this wizard about half way through a manual transfer process, the automatic wizard did not in truth totally eliminate the need to reinstall most major applications. If you are transferring from an old computer to a new one, try out the wizard found under Accessories and System Tools before you dig too deep into transferring your data the hard way. 

In this December issue, you will have found many articles covering the path to upgrades, new desktop systems, new laptop systems, and operating systems. I've previously reported on the minimum hardware configuration needed for Windows XP, but I want to emphasize get the fastest, largest, biggest system you can afford at the time before even considering putting Windows XP on it. I would personally want something rated 800mhz or above, rather than the 300mhz rating suggested by Microsoft. 256mb of Memory is a necessity and you can never go wrong with a large hard drive and high speed CD and CD-RW set of drives.

As the XP saga continues to unfold, I've been tasked with covering the pros and cons of changing over to this new operating system. One of the few truly new features in Microsoft's Windows XP operating system is called WPA (Windows Product Activation). As I've written about it in past columns, WPA is an irritating control scheme that can, under certain circumstances, require that you contact Microsoft via the Internet or telephone to obtain a new numeric key that "activates" (unhinders) XP's operation.

Microsoft has promoted this new behavior as a means to reduce mass software piracy, a goal we all share. But according to various articles and sources that I have read recently, the opinion is that that WPA won't slow down software pirates much at all. Instead, it has a different purpose, which I'll explain later.

As described by independent sources - and recently confirmed in a Microsoft white paper (page was recently removed from their Website after much publicity in various industry trade magazines) WPA examines the value of 10 hardware components when XP is first activated on a PC. 

These components are: 

• CPU type
• CPU serial number
• Boot drive
• Boot drive serial number
• Network adapter
• RAM amount range, such as 0-64MB, 65-128MB, etc.
• Display adapter
• IDE adapter
• SCSI adapter; and
• CD or DVD drive. 

Windows XP identifies some of these devices by reading their actual serial numbers and identifies others by their embedded text strings, such as "scsi-ibm." WPA is dependent on Wpa.dbl, a file stored in XP's System32 folder. This file is so easy for software counterfeiters to reproduce that it poses no barrier to them at all, as first revealed by tecChannel, an IDG publication in Germany.

In an installation of XP made from a retail CD, changing four out of 10 components triggers a need for "reactivation." But if a PC is configured as "dockable," then its display, IDE, and SCSI adapters are ignored and don't count if they change. Software pirates, therefore, need only configure a PC as "dockable" (a simple matter), switch off the serial number of the CPU, and alter the serial number of the boot drive. Pirates can then, in theory, create thousands of working PCs using a single Wpa.dbl file. The counterfeiters can build PCs that vary as many as three of the following components: CPU, RAM amount, network adapter, boot drive, and CD/DVD drive. As far as WPA is concerned, no reactivation is needed since the maximum level of change has not occurred.

According to these sources, XP's WPA is not weak due to poor programming. It was deliberately made weak to permit the kinds of hardware changes people make in the real world. WPA, in truth, wasn't designed to impede true pirates but to stop novice users from installing a second copy on a laptop or a child's PC. 

Microsoft claims that this WPA should not hinder the average computer user, as this type of user tends to buy a pre-built system off the shelf and make little or no change to the hardware configuration. But what happens when your system fails? A power surge wipes out some of your system, forcing you to transfer the hard drive to another system so you can get the data off of it. Real life problems can cause this average computer user to be faced with a WPA problem very easily.

Will XP be the next big operating system of choice for home systems? Since this issue's column won't be printed until about a month after XP hits the street officially, perhaps we already know the answer.