It is indeed a puzzling question.

I agree that if something is causing a problem and you have SLAs to deliver, the temptation is to rip it out and replace it. I am sure that we have all been along that route?

I would say that the concept applies to applications and hardware as well os OSes.

My "position" if you could describe it as such, is that vendors should not be able to "get away" with this sort of nonsense. They sold their product in good faith, so they should be obliged to keep that faith with their customers.

We also have to bear in mind that for many users and in many situations there is no practical alternative. The User and/or enterprise want a particular environment.

So, every time a small proportion of users have this sort of problem, there is a downside in adopting a different solution. This is that the vendor is not sufficiently harmed by loss of business, they have less incentive to get their side of the bargain right, and they have had their money already. It would be better if they were obliged to make a refund of that, at least

I do agree with the comments on commercial/institutional products and domestic/home ones.

Up until XP that is what happened. Then I suppose they decided to cut their development and support costs by merging their "desktop" OSes? I guess that is where the problem has arisen? Their attempts at DRM haven't been able to differentiate between corporate and individual licences.

As for *nix, I have always regarded this as a perfectly viable alternative on the server side, which is not where MS should be having DRM problems anyway? I could be wrong there, but I always had the impression that it was the the desktop deployments that MS was concerned about.

I appreciate that you are probably way too busy, but I would still be inclined to give them some "corporate consumer" grief over it..............then maybe you can get those copies of Vista for free, as compensation?