Joe,
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>>I don't think that MS will reduce prices significantly if their profitability increases because of this. Rule of thumb is that prices are dictated by what hte market will bear. If other software manufacturers don't see the same sort of reduction (I'm talking about those who make competing products), all MS will do is lower their prices enough so that they're the low cost leader. Doesn't have to be by much either. What happens then? More people will buy more MS products.
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>I understand simple supply and demand, though in the case of a monopoly (do we disagre in that MS has a desktop monopoly?) those rules cease to apply.

In terms of the Desktop Operating System, I agree. However, I would not agree that they have one in terms of Desktop applications or network OS.

>I wasn't making my point so that we could have a discourse on Econ 101. I wanted to try to figure out where you stand on this registration issue. Obviously Windows XP's anticipated registration process is fine with you. But how much is too much? If in the future MS needs to know more and more about your machine or about your location, or about other machines your PC is connected too (to zero in on potential piracy across the LAN lines, no doubt), what will be considered too much? I am not lambasting here, I am really curious as to what you would deem appropriate and inappropriate.
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>I don't think MS is evil or anything like that. I just think they are using very ethereal metrics (these piracy estimates) for very real snooping, and once they feel justified in such practices I worry about them pushing for more and more...what do you think?
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First of all, even though I have some of the products mentioned here (Office XP for example), I haven't installed any yet. As a result I'm really not qualified to address the inconvenience issue. As I understand it, however, basically it's done over the Internet or via a toll free call. Other products do have on-line registration at time of installation, but don't require you to register. In this case, it appears to be a requirement. If it's anything like some of the products that I have bothered to register (in order to get support), then to me it's NBD.

Second, I'd consider anything beyond name and address an infringement. In some cases, it may even be against the law. I doubt (but again, don't have the experience to confirm this) that they'd try to get something like an IP address. For example, here IP addresses are issued dynamically, so that information would be pretty much useless in determining whether or not the software was legal.