Seriously (and here's where I will get catcalls) this is why I wish MS -did- have a way to force more people to literally upgrade; If you're still running Win98, etc. I'd prefer they almost say "sorry, we don't support that product at all anymore"
They do for Win95.
You can say "oh, that's unfair" but call Ford and see if you can get parts for a Pinto. Or Chevy if you can get parts for a 68 whatever; you have to go aftermarket.
But MS doesn't allow aftermarket, so that's not a fair comparison. If all I do is Word Processing and Email, why should I have to upgrade my Pentium 233 to XP (which would require a hardware upgrade as well?) Keeping the auth number generator software costs MS nothing, and the support time is easily covered under by the $15.
If MS doesn't want to support their products, they should release them into the public domain.
At a certain point, it's true of all products, software is not the exception to the rule. I've had to replace books because they were tattered (See: Hitchhiker's Guide, Discworld, Dune and numerous others).
I don't think your analogy holds - this is more like losing the front cover of a book, and being forced to buy a new copy if you want to read it again. They still have the CD.
T
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