Microsoft Vista and Office Broken Already?

Claims (http://apcmag.com/node/4560) have been made already that Microsoft's next-generation Operating System and Office Productivity Suite, Vista and Office 2007 respectively, have had their registration mechanism cracked. That is, if you believe the files that can be downloaded through a number of file trading / sharing / downloading services. Given that the software has only just been declared 'Gold' and released to the manufacturing plants for production into retail boxes, this rapid release of files should be relatively easy for Microsoft to track down - given the low numbers of people that should have hands-on availability of the software.

A slightly positive outcome is that it appears that the cracked Vista install that is available has not been completely cracked. It bypasses the need for a valid Vista product key by replacing the different authentication elements with those from Vista Beta. As pointed out in the linked article, this should be fairly simple for Microsoft to identify and shut down - they already know the keys that were issued for the Beta testing phase, and it will be a straight forward process to prevent them from being used for final product activation.

The more concerning aspect is the Office 2007 cracked version that is available. The Enterprise version of the office productivity suite has been made available, and because it uses Volume Activation, there is no need for an activation key.