In an Apr raid on three Sim Lim Square shops, 300 copies of high-end counterfeit Microsoft software, including XP Professional and Office Professional 2003, worth $65,000 were seized from Best Bytes and Powersys - the biggest such haul in Singapore so far.

Another shop, Bizgram, was found with one copy of the China-made counterfeit software, which is so good it is practically indistinguishable from the originals, said Microsoft on Tuesday.

The units that Best Bytes and Powersys used to occupy at the popular tech haunt were shuttered and no longer bore the shops' logos when The Straits Times visited the complex on Tuesday. But Bizgram, located on the fifth floor, is still in business.

A spokesman for the shops, who declined to be named, said that while the owners of the three shops were related, the shops themselves were run independently and were not linked to each other. He declined to comment further on the case.

Microsoft expects the shops to replace any fake software they had previously sold consumers with originals, said its corporate attorney for intellectual property Jonathan Selvasegaram.

While Microsoft had sued both individuals and companies for piracy in the past, it decided not to do so this time because the shops 'wanted to settle' the matter out of court, said Mr Selvasegaram.

Retailers like Cybermind Computer House in Sim Lim Square, cheered the crackdown.

Shops peddling pirated software, said Cybermind's manager Chia Hung King, been around for at least 'three to four years now' and enjoy an unfair advantage because they can undercut legitimate players like himself by up to $50 per computer system.

The impact is significant, said Mr Chia, considering the profit margins per computer sold ranges from '$50 to $100'. Cybermind, which has been in Sim Lim Square for 10 years now, sells between '300 to 500' computers every month.

While Microsoft is well known for its tough stance towards software piracy, the software giant, for the first time here, is handing out some goodies in the form of point-of-sales materials to 11 Sim Lim Square retailers that sold legit software including Cybermind.

In the wake of media reports about dishonest retailers here passing off counterfeit software to consumers, Microsoft has been getting calls from worried consumers who wanted to know where they could buy original software, said Mr Selvasegaram.

This prompted Microsoft to audit some of its bigger retailers to verify that they were above board. About 900 shops buy OEM software from Microsoft every year.

OEM software are no-frills software packages sold by system builders. These builders install the software into computers they custom-make for consumers, or sell to consumers who want to build their own computers.