Penangan fenomena cetak rompak: harga Windows 7 di Shanghai, China hanya sekitar 20 yuan (kurang daripada 3 dolar Singapura) atau sama harganya dengan semangkuk mi babi yang dijual di tepi jalan di sekitar Shanghai.

Berdasarkan pengalaman wartawan di bawah ini, CD perisian komputer tiruan yang amat-amat murah itu boleh diperoleh dengan harga diskaun (sudahlah murah dapat diskaun lagi) jika barangan tersebut dibeli dalam jumlah yang banyak. Bukan hanya perisian komputer, barangan aksesori perempuan seperti beg tangan dan pakaian berjenama tiruan turut dijual secara berleluasa di sana.

Dalam hal ini saya tidak mahu ditempelak oleh peribahasa, "kuman di seberang laut nampak, gajah di depan mata tidak nampak" kerana gejala cetak rompak bukan sesuatu yang asing di negara kita. Gejala ini juga amat "popular" di sini. Kalau mahukan CD/VCD/DVD cetak rompak, anda dapat menemukan barangan tersebut dengan mudah di pasar malam, di lokasi tertentu, atau di sekitar Jalan Petaling (syurga barangan tiruan, tetapi awas dengan sikap kurang ajar peniaga ala kongsi gelap di situ). Begitu juga dengan barangan kulit dan pakaian berjenama tiruan yang amat mudah ditemukan di lokasi-lokasi yang dinyatakan tadi. Lagipun, apa barangan cetak rompak yang tidak ada dijual di negara kita? Baju, beg, kicap, sos, tali pinggang, aksesori telefon bimbit, aksesori komputer, rokok, makanan, semua ada...cuba senaraikan barang tiruan yang tidak dijual di negara ini?

Bagaimana barangan cetak rompak amat mudah didapati di negara kita? Persoalan itu perlu diajukan kepada pihak berkuasa tempatan, pihak polis, dan agensi penguatkuasaan yang terlibat. Yang peliknya, kadang-kadang barangan tiruan ini dijual selang beberapa blok sahaja dari pejabat pihak berkuasa. Jika tidak masakan nama negara pernah dicanangkan di seluruh dunia sebagai syurga VCD/DVD cetak rompak!

Namun, bak kata peribahasa, "alah membeli, menang memakai", barangan cetak rompak memang banyak kelemahan dan kekurangannya. Hal ini boleh dilihat dari segi kualiti dan mutu pembuatannya yang jauh berbeza daripada barangan asli. Lanjut sila baca pautan di bawah ini:

[ASIAONE] - I confess, my copy of Windows 7 Ultimate, the latest version of Microsoft's Windows franchise, was just that: a copy.

I picked it up at a shop in a subway station near my house for 20 yuan, or less than $3 -- about the price of a bowl of soupy pork noodles available across Shanghai.

I bought it this week on a story assignment that sent me into the city's notorious Xinyang market, where boxes of the software were tucked among racks of fake Ralph Polo T-shirts and Gucci bags, even though its official launch was a week away.

One shopkeeper, a petite woman in her 30s, was clearly impressed by my well-heeled attire and assumed I was a seasoned buyer of pirated wares rampant throughout China.

"If you buy 10 you get it cheaper," she said in broken English.

"If you buy Microsoft Office 2010, you also get cheaper. I can wholesale you. How many you want?," she prodded, eager to unload stacks of the CDs wrapped in white non-descript cases.

In a sign of how far China has come since its Communist Iron Rice Bowl days, there was even the promise of customer satisfaction: "The installation instructions are in English and if it's not working you can bring it back to change," she said.


HALFWAY THERE
I left with my box containing one Windows 7 disk, the first part of my task completed.
Now came the more daunting part.

Many have warned me that installing pirated versions of Windows on a computer is a bit like playing Russian Roulette with your hard drive. But I had to see this mission through, and enlisted a colleague's help to install it on a laptop.

The results were quite impressive, at least initially.

Windows 7's interface is very fresh. Instead of little square boxes on the task bar at the bottom of the screen, there are icons. Keeping track of multiple browser windows is no problem as one click of the Internet Explorer icon lets you see all the browsers you have open.

It also allows you to drag interactive applets or widgets onto your desktop, and the boot-up time seemed faster than for the Windows Vista I have on my laptop at home.

But, after a reboot, the laptop mysteriously crashed, with a black screen prompting: "Bootmgr is missing."

Uh-oh.

Thankfully, my colleague had the genuine Windows XP on hand and my rendezvous with piracy was over....