Bill Gates says that some 17 million copies of XP have shipped since the operating system was launched late in October. It's a safe bet that a high percentage of these sales and shipments were bunched at the very end of last year, and the very beginning of this one. Between end-of- year budget purchases, holiday promotions, and Christmas gift PCs preloaded with Windows XP, millions of people--- and thousands of LangaList readers--- are right now experiencing their first few weeks with the new operating system.

That means many users are heading for a surprise as the internal counter inside every copy of Windows XP gets ready to enforce the mandatory "Windows Product Activation" (WPA) after one month of use.

The surprise isn't WPA itself--- we've covered that in depth. The surprise is the way it's implemented in Windows XP: You see, unlike the WPA in the Office XP/2002 products, one misstep with the version of WPA inside Windows XP (the operating system) may leave you unable to boot your PC; unable to access or back up your files; and in fact, unable to do *anything useful at all* with your PC. Your shiny new XP system will be nothing but a giant paperweight!

If you're in your first month of use of XP, you need to know what's coming. If you don't, that one WPA misstep could leave you with no way to access or salvage your data!

For the full scoop, please see the new Information.Com article at http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20020117S0002 ; it contains full details on the various WPA scenarios and what the consequences of each are; plus info on how to ensure that you don't lose access to your data. Please come check it out, and then share your thoughts on WPA in the ListeningPost: http://www.informationweek.com/forum/fredlanga

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