Criticism of Microsoft's Windows Vista has come from some traditional sources, but now the UK Green Party has decided to put the boot in. 

The organisation has issued a statement claiming that the new operating system is forcing people to undertake expensive and environmentally harmful upgrades, and is also damaging consumer rights.

"Future archaeologists will be able to identify a 'Vista Upgrade Layer' when they go through our landfill sites," said Siân Berry, female principal speaker for the Green Party.

"There will be thousands of tonnes of dumped monitors, video cards and whole computers that are perfectly capable of running Vista, except that they lack the paranoid lock-down mechanisms Vista forces us to use."

The party believes that this represents an "offensive cost to the environment ".

Berry is particularly critical of Vista's DRM technology, which she said is intrusive and unnecessary for consumers and only included to appease entertainment conglomerates.

The DRM technology is also inefficient, the group claims, since it imposes extra power costs and hardware resources to constantly check for unlicensed data.

The Green Party urged companies and individuals to switch to open source, which is largely without DRM and can be run on existing hardware.

"Vista requires more expensive and energy-hungry hardware, passing the cost on to consumers and the environment," said Derek Wall, male principal speaker for the Green Party.

"This will also further exclude the poor from the latest technology, and impose burdensome costs on small and medium businesses which will be forced to enter another expensive upgrade cycle."