>Oh boy, this is going to be fun once Windows 11 launches.

Looks like MS is caring about its customer base a lot! And that's certainly NOT the behavior of a corporation enjoying some sort of monopolistic position.

I am sad that the US has moved into such territory - letting corporations enjoy such monopolistic positions. I let you imaging who is going to win the game with such a marketplace. Those of us who studied economics and business laws during the 70s can certainly remember a time when the US was a leader in this field:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law

In this area (protecting the consumer... and the marketplace) I am happy to live in Europe since we are not moving this way here. At least at the current junction.

Of course, everyone is losing here in the end. Customers first and later even corporations that abused their ultimate position, the top one. In view of what China is doing - sort of going the other way round whilst remaining nominally "communist" - I am alas a bit appalled with the possible end of the party (business party..).

I loved the MS of early years (and the America of the past as well with its relatively robust anti trust laws) so much that I find these recent steps quite hard to stomach.

Well I may have to dump a host of fully workable machines and, possibly, start to buy a couple of new ones before the semiconductor industry starts to freeze...

Daniel