kaled - 1:01 am on Oct 18, 2006 (gmt 0)

Depending on how it is implemented, I could imagine a situation whereby hardware manufacturers sue Microsoft for making it hard for them to sell upgrade components.

For instance, if changing the motherboard kills Windows then motherboard manufacturers are likely to be pretty upset. If changing the CPU to a newer model kills Windows then Intel (and AMD) will go after MS in a big way.

Of course, Microsoft may have a means of getting around this but I have my doubts.

For 99.9999% of the population this change will be meaningless and have no impact

I doubt that even Microsoft would be so foolishly optimistic. In any case, making such high predictions of satisfaction requires a confidence in the reliability of Microsoft code that is almost absurdly optimistic based on past performance.

Kaled.