>I'm not so sure. Vista was an update to XP, that was reaching end of
>life. I know many people that upgraded because of that. If you're on
>Win7 now, end of life is years away.

WinXP was released in October, 2001, and I believe won't officially reach final end-of-life in SP3 form in April 2014 (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/endofsupport.aspx).

Vista was released in late January, 2007, well within the normal lifespan of WinXP. As of July, 2011, I know that at least one major car manufacturer in the U.S. was still using WinXP purposefully over Win7 because XP was lightweight, reliable, and worked well with the Dell machines they had. This was true even on their critical just-in-time manufacturing production lines, though some in the office had migrated to Win7.

Vista was well over $100 for basic editions. I paid around $260 for Vista Professional.

I believe Microsoft is offering wide upgrade paths to people at such a low cost because they want people to migrate to their new architecture (Metro/Windows 8/Modern UI), and they know it's a leap for many. They wouldn't pay $100+ for it. And it seems many aren't paying $40 for it, at least not yet, and at least not in droves.

>>>http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/gadgetbox/windows-8-adoption-rate-reportedly-worse-vista-1C7800805
>>>This should not come as a surprise to anyone
>>Even at $40. Telling. Very telling.

My next OS will be the next version of Trisquel, or Linux Mint 14 with MATE.