With a marketing budget of half a billion dollars ($500 000 000 000), none of us can have failed to have heard about Microsoft's latest offering: Windows Vista. Computer retailers have been selling equipment with "Vista Ready" stickers for some time now, so many are already asking the inevitable question: "when shall I upgrade?"

For most people, answering this question would normally entail considering:

• Can my computer run Vista?
• Do I have the cash?
  

But this time around, there are some deeper issues with the new Microsoft release that should really be given some serious consideration.

A lot of it hinges around Digital Rights Management (DRM). This bears some thinking about because it will impinge on the way you wish to listen to and watch digital media. It will restrict the way in which you are able to enjoy your entertainment and may, in fact, degrade the quality of the products you purchase.

Windows Vista has DRM embedded into the core of the operating system. Each time you play what is termed "premium content", Vista checks for copyright protection.  In fact, 30 times every second, irrespective of what you are doing, playing media or otherwise, Vista checks to make sure that you're not doing something that it thinks you shouldn't. In addition, when you do play premium content, it checks the hardware to make sure that no copyrighted material could be potentially read or leaked. This means that all hardware needs to be certified DRM compliant by Microsoft in order for the computer to play the media. If not, Vista will either simply refuse to play the media, or will deliberately degrade the quality. Much of the technical aspects of this system are described in a long paper by computer security specialist Peter Gutman, himself a long time user of Microsoft Windows. The upshot of his research is that many computer systems labelled as "Vista Ready" will not be able to play premium content, such as High Definition video, because Vista will disable or cripple the hardware. This is true of much high-end equipment such as 50" monitors, $1000 video cards and top-end sound-cards. Despite the long delays in the release of Vista, hardware manufacturers have still had not enough time to comply with Vista's DRM. For many people who have bought high-end equipment for their PCs, the only answer will be to go out and spend again, despite the fact that the equipment is supposed to work with Vista.

DRM is a media industry response to piracy, and in no way do we promote piracy, but the effect may be to worsen the situation rather than improve it. consumerist.com has a story that shows the inconvenience that DRM can cause. The motivation behind DRM is unclear. Within days of Vista's release, some aspects of security seem already to have been cracked and the door may already be open for piracy. If this is the case and many people's PCs are crippled in playing media that has been legitimately purchased, the temptation to pursue illegal means to view or listen to the content must be all the greater. DRM does little to protect the rights of the artist in the grand scheme of things: it protects the media industry in being able to charge different rates for the same content in different parts of the world.  It allows them to ensure that content is played on only one device, and that you must repurchase the media to play it elsewhere.

DRM is being applied in other places where it really doesn't belong. Science has progressed with freedom and dissemination of information as one of its central tenets. Yet in a recent report, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have cancelled its subscription to the Journal of the Society for Automotive Engineers because reading the journal on-line requires a plug-in to Adobe Acrobat that restricts printing to a single copy and is not available to Linux or UNIX users. Professor John Heywood, the director of MIT's Sloan Automotive Lab, who publishes in the journal, responded to the imposition with the question:  “Their intellectual property?”

Musicload, a music download site offering free content, say that fully 75% of all customer service problems and complaints are due to Windows Vista. 

DRM constricts freedom.

Beyond DRM, there are still serious issues with Vista. Industry-respected consultants, such as Gartner, are recommending that businesses should delay in installing Vista until at least 2008. Harvard University computer department have stated that they will not deploy Vista in the foreseeable future for a number of reasons: