New
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take a cautious look: 7 Reasons to Avoid Windows 7
from, Wired.com's Gadget Lab
Read More,Built-In Support for Egregious Hardware-Based DRM
Paranoid XP users won’t wish to upgrade to Windows 7 for the same reason they didn’t switch to Vista: Like Vista, Windows 7 includes support for digital rights management technologies that could potentially regulate how you use your media. Though some alarmists have called Microsoft’s DRM “draconian,” the implemented DRM hasn’t proved to bear significant consequences yet.
Ars Technica provides a thorough explanation of the DRM in question. In short, the technologies called Protected Video Path (PVP) and Protected User Mode Audio (PUMA) provide secure playback of video and audio media, respectively. “Little or no media actually demands the use of the protected paths, so on most users’ systems, Windows never invokes them,” wrote Ars Technica’s Peter Bright. “Play back unprotected media on a Vista machine, and the DRM subsystems simply don’t get used.”
Still, there are going to be people cringing in fear that one day PUMA and PVP will screw them over. And for that reason they’ll be sticking with XP — or a totally open OS like Linux.
7 Reasons to Avoid Windows 7 | Gadget Lab | Wired.com