When I moved to the USA, one of the first things I did was get a cell phone. I was going to be living in a big city, rothko was working in a different part of town, we needed to coordinate things–it seemed to make sense. We went to Omnipoint, got a couple of phones, everything was good. A few years later, Omnipoint were purchased by Voicestream. We got a phone upgrade.
Now that George W is Acting President, Microsoft is confidently returning to its old business practices. Like every successful monopolist, they’ve decided that it’s time to bleed the customers dry. There are apparently two main components to this strategy: If you don’t upgrade to Windows XP or Windows 2000 and Office 2000 by October, you’ll have to pay full retail price for future Windows and Office upgrades. Yes, they’re coupling Office with Windows—be running the latest version of both by October, or pay full price for upgrades for both.