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Microsoft's battle with pirates, which started as early as 1975 with Bill Gates' infamous "Open Letter to Hobbyists," continues on in 2007, as the company has built a feature into Office 2007: Reduced Functionality Mode. While Microsoft has been fairly coy about whether or not this feature exists in the latest Office release, a new Knowledge Base article on their site confirms that it will apply to all Office 2007 products.

Reduced Functionality mode is triggered whenever Office 2k7 fails activation. This can happen when the program is initially run after installation, or if it fails a subsequent check following an Office update. Once the switch is thrown, Office continues to run, but with the following restrictions:

* You cannot create new documents.
* You can view existing documents. However, you cannot edit them.
* You can print documents. However, you cannot save them.

Despite what some media outlets are reporting, the Reduced Functionality Mode is not new. It already applies to Office 2003 and even Office XP versions. While the approach undoubtedly has at least some impact on piracy, the process is not 100 percent foolproof: some legitimate users have reported problems with the activation process.

Microsoft is not just limiting Reduced Functionality Mode to its Office programs, however. The company is also planning to introduce reduced functionality limitations to Windows Vista, which also must be activated after installing. Copies of Vista that fail the activation process will have the Aero visual effects disabled and any "Premium" or "Ultimate" features deactivated.

Most industry analysts consider the total elimination of software piracy to be impossible: dedicated crackers will view any new scheme as an intellectual challenge to be overcome by any means necessary. However, by adding all sorts of "kill switches" to the operating system and applications, Microsoft can make keeping up with their antipirating measures just annoying enough that many users will choose to purchase a legitimate version instead.