>A lot of people who remember the old days when packaged/pay once software was the only game in town are viscerally opposed to the subscription model...

In the early days software was free - it was just shipped with the computer (the big ones) :)

>....I'm not, as long as I get recurring value-added as well as recurring costs. But that's more difficult to evaluate in a subscription model. There's the danger that MS will make no significant improvements at all, and simply say using Windows as-is is worth $XX per renewal, if you don't like it use something else. But you can be sure they'll put full effort into locking users into the platform.

And to lock anybody else out. There will be the major improvement.

I do not know how this works in the US but for a company in germany there is some fiscal sense in the subsription model. Just like the tax write-off of a device you bought compared to a leased one.