'XP not cracked', says Microsoft

Microsoft has denied that its flagship Office XP suite has been cracked, just days after the high-profile launch.

Rumours have been appearing after an article went up on unofficial Windows news website W2Knews.com, claiming that a bootleg copy of Office XP worked without being activated by Microsoft.

This led some people to believe that the product activation system on Office XP had been cracked. However, the real answer may lie in a misunderstanding over the details of Microsoft's new licensing agreement.

If you buy a copy of Office XP off the shelf, or for a single user, the accompanying activation key will allow Office to be installed and activated on two machines: a primary desktop and a secondary laptop.

But in a corporate environment the activation key does not have to be entered on every machine, otherwise the systems administrator would be "tearing his hair out in frustration", according to a Microsoft spokesman.

It is likely that, in this case, someone had obtained a copy of the corporate edition of Office XP, which would already have been activated.

A spokesman for the Redmond giant said that, as far as Microsoft is concerned, "the code had not been cracked" and, although some bootleg copies of Office are appearing, "the activation system was only designed to stop casual copying of software".