>>>Hopefully without going to deep into conspiracy theo[log/r]y....
>>Something is only a "theory" when there is insufficient evidence to prove it.
>>That is not the case with what Microsoft is doing to its consumer base.
>>It is now a matter of history.
>
>As making money from software is not evil in itself IMO, from my POV it is a
>question of degree. Forcing me to call each time I want to switch installs for
>something I bought (and heightening the bad expirience) is crossing the
>Rubicon. My personal paranoia revolves more on gov extending its reach
>into personal freedom by technical means ;-)

Yes. A man named Eben Moglen, who is the chief lawyer for the Software Freedom Law Center, said that he was speaking with a colleague of his who, during the 1990s, fought vehemently to disallow public key encryption technology. He made the comment not long ago that the U.S. (government officials) needed a "robust social graph" of Americans. Enter enhanced / cooperative efforts between big technology companies and the government.

>>Recommend Linux and LibreOffice. A change in the way you operate, but
>>you'll never go back. For everything Windows I use Windows Server 2003
>>in a VirtualBox VM. Works perfectly.
>
>Over here quite a few Virtualbox VM - some with W2K prof if used for old stuff (tiny mem
>usage, no browser [at least IE links also banished], no firewall, no AV, tiny VHD [yes, I know,

I have one Win2K Prof VM as well. Very tiny footprint. I use it for my text-to-speech reader mostly. Launches and shuts down quickly. :-)

>but explained by usage history...] also one on person with USB stick - used only for work)
>or XP prof (got more usage when some Dotnet would not run in W2K). Bought a couple
>of licenses for update to W8 to have some VM's patched, but unsure if I downgrade them
>to W7 - time will tell. Linux mosty used as emergency OS here, but might change if all normal
>usage is done with VM's.

I have found VMs to be fabulous. I run Linux for everything I do except VFP development, and developing Visual FreePro. Occasionally I'll come across a website which requires Windows-only stuff (like Amazon.com's music downloader). I'll use it for that too. But everything else I now do in Linux Mint 14 with MATE.

>LibreOffice: tested, but felt sluggish on some machines. I am happily using my Office97
>and don't care if spell checker is from last century as it loads and handles FAST.

Awesome. I still have Office 2000 myself. :-)

>Even faster are Winword 2 and Excel4 I still have on one disk, but for most of my usage that
>is enough, unless I need something esoteric in Excel. Only then one of the newer Office
>installs gets to heat up the CPU.

Understood. I still pretty much use LibreOffice for everything. Only when there is some newer feature requirement will I use a more modern version of Office, and then it's only on work computers.

>Sometimes thinking about switching on desktop and pad to softmaker for Office software:
>carried forward on Win, Linux and Android and not too bloated. No real need but nerd
>shopping lust ;-)

Cool.

>BTW: good way handling technical posts an religious ones now. Will still read all your
>technical ones and might look in a non-tech thread where another of my favorites also
>participates ;-)

Thanks. I cannot take credit. It was a suggestion by this site's owner. Made perfect sense. Would've done it before but it never occurred to me.