Now MS is revving up the pressure on consumers by inhibiting software transfer and all sorts of crazy notions. Specifically: 1) You can't upgrade your motherboard if you buy an OEM version of Vista. (you may be able to do this with the retail version, it's not clear). 2) You can not do a 'clean install' of an upgrade version of Vista, even if you have the old system (Win XP) CD. Essentially MS really really wants you to shell out $200-$400 for every copy of Vista, on every machine you have, and when you want to upgrade, you get to shell out even more money.

This was tried originally with Win3, and WinXP, with various success. I think really it just lengthened the time to upgrade, since people aren't willing to deal with these ridiculous schemes. And, with strong competition from Apple and Linux (which hasn't happened before, ever), MS better wise up if they want to continue the dominance of the PC market. I think honestly it will be a very long time before people upgrade, (years), and the only reason would be that they bought a new PC and Vista came pre-installed. It's very hard to get enthusiastic about this OS when there are so many DRM and other strangle issues.

Vista Update is cheaper than the full version but requires a) a legit copy of XP and b) that you forever forfeit the XP license. What a great deal! Now there is a workaround for it, but it involves installing Vista twice. Even better deal! Still, you get to keep your XP license key.