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>>That's one charitable way to view it. It looks to ME that MS is trying to INCREASE THEIR REVENUE STREAM.
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>Of course they are trying to increase their revenue stream. 40 BILLION (that's just the cash) wouldn't be enough for me :)

Right. MS seems to have moved from creativity as the way to increase their revenues to inventing "milking machines" to do it instead.
It seems their foray into license/leasing last year hasn't worked out, so this is the next version of that machine.

I'm sure we'll get some who will argue that this is MS' way to finally overcome the problem of back version support, for both OSs and products. That won't hold water, though, because
1) the customer rules;
2) there are more and more cheaper alternatives for many things.

MS set the precedence and now they use some clandestine background method to change things. Astonishingly rude and insensitive!!!

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>- Brian