This will backfire

PCs have gotten so powerful that a basic model is capable of supercomputer feats compared to the high-end machines of ten years ago. Given that the computational costs of running things like Office should be roughly what they were 10 years ago, it's no surprise to see that people aren't exactly upgrading their hardware in droves. This is what Microsoft is gambling on, since people aren't exactly queueing up to buy Vista off the shelf (and those that have, I hear, have really regretted it. One guy I know also went as far to say that the copy of Office 2007 on his laptop was one he was really glad he hadn't paid for, and that he would be going back to 2003).

Doesn't bode well for Microsoft.

I know people running 300MHz Celeron systems with Windows 98, IE 5.5 and Office 97 on, and they have absolutely no intention of upgrading. Sooner or later, the PC upgrade drive will run out of steam - only gamers and power users will upgrade regularly. Microsoft's mistake is in thinking we're all gamers or content users - many PC users I know couldn't give a stuff about the ability to play back DVD or video content on their PC. That's what the DVD player downstairs is for, innit?

I am personally a power user, and I have been so satisfied with the Intel hardware of yesteryear (I'm running a 3.2GHz Northwood and 2.4GHz Northwood, both still on AGP graphics and with Windows XP / Solaris x86 on 2GB of memory), that I have absolutely no intention of upgrading until about a year after Nehalem debuts and DDR3 has dropped its latencies to something acceptable (and the speed has gone to 2000MHz). I've held off upgrading for three years, and I can easily manage another three years on the same hardware. If Microsoft wants to make XP slow, I can simply reinstall SP2 from the CD and never install network drivers - so I'd be immune from attack. I could then use my other (Solaris x86) box for internet access ... problem solved!

If I had just one PC at my disposal however, I'd be buying myself a copy of VMWare and running Windows XP stuff under the Penguin - probably one more reason Microsoft is really scared of both...

Oliver.