The Microsoft/Seagate/China plans...
It would be interesting to know if the subject laptops will come standard with TPMs. The Seagate drives don't require TPMs but they'll be more versatile with TPMs on board. The following procedure would seem to be more efficient with a TPM (and Wave client/server products) that could better measure the state of the Vista software needing activation:
In order to activate the Vista software, and thus turn on the computer, owners will have to contact Microsoft and prove the software isn't pirated. Once activated, the Seagate disk drive on board prevents the software from being copied and redistributed, the sources said.
This also reminds me of a good point made by Awk several weeks ago regarding the theft from a USB thumb drive of $15 billion worth of documents by a Boeing employee. Awk's point was that the data could have been stored on a FDE.2 drive and controled by TPM/Domain binding. As such, for Chinese customers to have continuing Microsoft services, whether for support or subscriptions, the use of the FDE.2 drives combined with TPMs, TDM, ERAS, EAS and EEE (for network access control) could provide a strong solution to maintain the integrity of Microsoft products sold in China.
And what's of further interest are the suggestions made in the article that this is a solution that will go beyond China. Could this be the beginning of global subscription services based on a trusted computing architecture?
China is the initial target market because the nation has been a hotbed for pirated software. It's estimated that in 2006, about 82% of all the software used in the nation had been illegally copied and passed on. "China's where all the action is, so that's where we're going first," one of the sources said.
