In an acronym: WGA. My laptop came directly from Dell with the OS pre-installed, and it's validated itself as "Genuine Windows Vista" before. But one day--probably after updating, or failing to update itself--it decided that it couldn't validate itself anymore. So depending on how annoying the OS decides to be, it gives me pop ups every few minutes to every few hours telling me that I "might be a victim of software counterfeiting" and to please click on the link provided to validate my copy of Vista. Sure enough, I click on the link, download and run their validator, and it tells me that I do have a real, genuine, 100% loved-by-Microsoft copy of their product. But does my machine seem to agree? Nope. The bottom right of my screen has a little note that won't go away, the the software counterfeiting notice keeps popping up. Sigh. At least I haven't hit the reduced functionality that other users have complained about.

At least it's comforting to know that I'm not the only one that's had this problem. I heard a rumor that Dell was allowing customers to go back to XP--I don't know if it's true, but if it is, I'm switching. Apparently Vista's now "more than two times slower than the most current builds of its
older sibling."