In SP1, it’s gone.

They aren’t removing the other WGA stuff – in fact, they’re making it more annoying – but the kill switch (knocking the system down to Internet Explorer only) for pirate copies was almost certainly a step too far, especially since it could very occasionally malfunction. Much fairer to simply have a bunch of annoying warnings rather than the nuclear measure, and a sign of exactly how much SP1 should improve the operating system.

[As an aside, exactly why is it that people bash the User Account Control system when UAC is only required in the same places that the sudo type equivalent would be on Mac OS X or Linux – that is, for changing important system settings or installing applications? On a normal Linux system, actually, you have to run sudo more times to configure and install stuff than you ever have to click the ‘Accept’ box (or type a password if you’re operating user/administrator) in UAC on Vista, so why Slashdigg et al keep on bashing Vista based on UAC is somewhat perplexing. The only problem with UAC is that certain people in the ancient past wrote applications that demanded full administrator permission to run because of poor programming, and Microsoft finally called them on it. Just a thought, anyway.]