I’m not sure if this is a political stunt by Microsoft, or if they are really going to go forward with it. If they are it is insane: By not giving Europeans the capability to upgrade their operating system, like it has done for more than twenty years and at the same time trying to put the blame on the European Commission for doing so (while not providing any specific reasons for doing so), Microsoft is really shooting itself in the foot; from a PR point of view it’s a pretty bad strategy that’s almost certainly going to backfire. At any rate, I feel so sorry for all those people that are going to want to upgrade from a poor OS like Vista to a mediocre one like Windows 7 and having to do a full reinstall [let alone pay the premium of getting the full version].