Our $hillster writes:

...one must read the actual licence.

Here's the relevant section:

Internet-Based Services Components. The Product contains components that enable and facilitate the use of certain Internet-based services. You acknowledge and agree that Microsoft may automatically check the version of the Product and/or its components that you are utilizing and may provide upgradres or fixes to the Product that will be automatically downlaoded to your Workstation Computer. [my emphasis][and mine! - CRC]

Now, that does not read to me like an unconditional reservation of right to inspect your computer; only a reservation of right to inspect the version of your OS and its components should you choose to use the internet-based services.[My de-emphasis - CRC]

There, I fixed it up a bit for you... HTH! :-)

Seriously, though, what do you think "the Product" means?

The Internet update "service"? No, that'd be called "the Service", not "the Product".

The specific software bits that do the updating? No, they're called "components" here.

It can only mean one thing: Windows as a whole. This *is* the license _for Windows_ we're talking about, right? You'll certainly be "utilizing" *that*, if you're getting a Windows license in the first place...

And the way such licenses -- sorry, I mean: "licenses"! -- work, is that you agree to the whole shebang, or you don't have the right to use "the Product". No inspection right for them, no Windows for you.

BTW, how do you differentiate "only ('only'!) a reservation of right to inspect the version of your OS" from an "unconditional reservation of right to inspect your computer", in actual practice? The user only hears his hard drive rattling a little, as files here and there upon it are inspected. Do you think Microsoft will throw up a dialog to tell you which directories, exactly, it is accessing? Even if they do, will you trust that it doesn't check any others? You can't very well set up your _operating system_ to be able to get at only some directories and not others, can you?

There may well be nefarious doin's down the line, but I don't think this is the start of it.

Re-read Andrew's typical schedule. This is precisely how it *always* begins.

More likely from my experience is that MS will just rev the version of Windows, announce that "this is the subscription only version, suck it down" and USA, Inc. and UK plc will do just that.

Exactly -- and when some few people there complain, everybody will say: "Hey, what are you whining about (now)?!? This was in the old XP license too, and you didn't complain then!" So you'd better -- complain *now*, that is.

Oh, and one more thing: "We're such a big busy international company, that we really don't have the time to write a separate version of the license for each and every piddling little country" -- so you guys, bowing down to them as you predict, will buy *us*, the rest of the world, the same egregious license terms even before we're forced to start swallowing the subscription shit. Which will tend to reinforce that later, when they get around to us, as we then will have been "accepting" those terms for *two* whole product generations before.

So no, *don't* acquiesce and put it aside with a "never mind that, it's not important *now*" -- because that'd only help make sure that it *will* be all the more important -- and inevitable! -- later on.