>But the market has been changing. Apart from a shrinking pool of MS familiars, the market now is focused on customer benefit rather than brand. It has to be, not only because MS has made itself irrelevant in the mobile space but because it's been a very long time since a Windows OS delivered a real customer "wow" moment. Most people these days purchase a new Windows OS only because it's compulsory with their new PC or because vendors have Foxed drivers they need. You don't see the sense of excitement we saw with Win95 when people slept outside stores overnight to be first in line. Vendors who once seemed exciting and colorful now appear tired and old to people making mobile choices. Shame, but they did it to themselves.


I have purchased a couple of W8 licenses before the price hike.
They will be used to move most of my often used VM's from W2K and XP to W8 -
so that I only have to remember one mindset for my work.
Skipped Vista, have W7 on as host but found no real benefit,
as I have no crashes with my honed XP. A 10% of base price as yearly tax to keep
the security current but having access to all OS settings "unbettered" would be a no-brainer -
but to pay MS for every new version to go hunting for the place they hid my needed functionality
just to be able to call it "new" and try for new sell - noway...

If it were up to me I'd stay with XP for more years, deciding myself if I run as Admin or User -
not having me hand held as admin in W7 sometimes.
Office similar: I have minimal license for newer versions,
but (aside from Excel sometimes) I myself only need 97 functionality.

From grumbling aside - this is a sure sign they are milking a cash cow
and not really innovating. So not a good long term investment.

my 0.02€

thomas