>That would surely result in lawsuits on such a scale that even Microsoft would be lucky to survive the results. Unless they're bound by a contract, which woul

>That would surely result in lawsuits on such a scale that even Microsoft would be lucky to survive the results. Unless they're bound by a contract, which would only apply to very large customers, they're under no obligation to continue support for Win7. It's just like XP; there's no support for that unless you're a special customer who pays extra for that support. >They already do seem to be crippling Windows 7 updates; there have been numerous reports of problems since earlier this year where Windows Update will sit there taking literally hours to do the most simple tasks, Yep, and there's no legal recourse here either. They can run Windows Updates however they want. Don't like it? Don't get any updates, and leave yourself open to hacking and malware. >>What are people going to do, stop getting security updates? >Probably. See above. Good luck dealing with the malware and hacking. >>Or switch to a different OS? >Possibly. You're joking, right? Linux backers have been trying to encourage people to switch to that for ages and it hasn't gotten very far. Apple has a very strong brand with huge success in mobile devices and they haven't gotten very far either. >There is rarely true lock-in within this industry. WTF are you talking about? Every time anyone proposes switching to Linux, tons of people pop up talking about all the applications they're bound to which only work on Windows. Lock-in (with apps) is the entire reason Windows is so dominant. It's the exact same reason that WinPhone has been a disaster and can't make a dent in the Android and iPhone marketshare: there's no apps for it. >If they fail to do that, either by not making 10 an attractive proposition or by trying to degrade 7 until people give up, then those big corporate migration exercises do have alternatives they could consider No, they don't. They're locked into tons of applications that only run on Windows. As everyone knows, there's no Photoshop on Linux. The same is true for countless business applications that most of us have never heard of, but are critically important to businesses (and each business has different, obscure applications it's bound to). Don't forget, with larger businesses, they do site licenses, so they pay constant license fees to MS no matter which MS they run. No matter what these customers do, they're going to be paying MS for the privilege of running their software. There's no way MS can screw this up, it's just a matter of which tactic will maximize profit. At worst, they'll have a steady but constant revenue stream.