Is Windows piracy in China Microsoft's own fault?

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An academic at China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said recently that 98.1 percent of all new PCs sold in China come with a genuine operating system (OS) installed. With close to all of those being Microsoft Windows machines, then perhaps Microsoft itself is to blame for piracy in China--because the company makes it too difficult to remain legal.

The high figure is due, said MIIT science department spokesperson Han Jun, to most people buying PCs from established vendors--from Lenovo to Great Wall, Dell to Acer--who all license Microsoft's OS. So that's good news. But that figure declines alarmingly over the course of a PC's life, to the point at which I rarely see a computer that's still running its original--and legit--OS in China.

The problem comes when a Windows OS user here encounters a major issue with his/her computer, which is very likely to happen, with so much malware circulating in China, and just over 30 percent of local netizens still using Internet Explorer 6 (yes, six). At that point, Microsoft's solution for restoring a PC is confusing, and it even varies between PC manufacturers. Some companies give consumers a recovery disk, but most do not in China--perhaps because of (ironically?) fears of piracy. Some provide a recovery partition on the new PC, as a user's way of implementing a tabula rasa and getting a fresh and safe PC. But a number of PC vendors do nothing apart from give you a Windows serial number and show you the door.

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Piracy = Path of Least Resistance

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Those who get a recovery partition will find that it's easily lost, or perhaps even corrupted. Others have no fail-safe at all. And so, when a Chinese PC user encounters the, apparently inevitable, time when the machine is riddled with viruses and crapware and needs a good spring cleaning, very many of them reach for a pirated copy of Windows as the fastest and most convenient way of recovering their machines. And that--to play devil's advocate--makes piracy of Microsoft's desktop platform in China largely the company's own fault. If you don't trust users with a full reinstall disc as Apple does (pictured below are mine for OS X 10.4--though I never needed them), then that 98 percent legit figure is going down faster than a greasy fried dumpling.



Apple's solution is more elegant: It gives users full control, and entrusts them with a full reinstall disc (Snow Leopard or earlier). More recently, with OS X Lion, you can download the entire OS from Apple's servers. And thus, Apple gives its customers the easiest solution. Microsoft makes it all confusing and difficult, dictating that a buried feature for a "System Restore", or a manually-made system restore disc, is what folks ought to use. But people will choose the path of least resistance--and that seems to be offered by pirates with their 10 RMB (US$1.60) XP or Windows 7 discs, or by download sites, such as Tomato XP pictured up top. Hey, it even comes with a customized skin, to make it look less like XP.

So before Steve Ballmer slams piracy in China in his next little rant, he might do well to think if his own company is doing it right, or forcing time-strapped users into an unsatisfactory solution.

[Hat-tip: Marbridge Consulting]