When people start a sentence with " to be fair" or "let's be honest" it usually means they don't really believe what they are going to say either.
Quite true, but I used the phrase honestly in this case.
What was wrong with the system that you bought an OS for $80-100 used it for 3-4 years then bought the next version. Nobody asked ms to give away windows 10 for free, or to make it the "last" windows. This is a problem entirely of their own making. MS is making your computer theirs, and a subscription based OS further advances that agenda, as you will no longer be able to use your computer without constantly paying MS.
Not being able to 'use' the computer without paying MS is probably not where they're going with this; it's unlikely that MS would build a model where
constant internet connection is required.
The big issue is that keeping OSs updated is expensive. MS doesn't tie OSs to purchases of MS hardware like Apple does for Mac OS, thus they need a different means to offset the cost of security updates. And that's fair, as we consumers shouldn't expect something for nothing.
I know it is cliché by now, but if MS really goes the subscribe or die route with consumer windows, I really expect an uptick in linux installations. And piracy.
There's already an 'uptick', especially if you count ChromeOS (which is debatable, admittedly). But more to the point, what MS brings is what cannot be done on Linux. Even Microsoft themselves reduce that list every year but for desktop users, especially in corporate environments, there's really very little alternative that addresses the usability, compatibility, and security infrastructure enabled by the whole Microsoft stack.
And that security side is getting more onerous by the month; sure, Linux is probably more secure in terms of being a single exposed machine left to default settings - and that's also pretty distribution dependent as well - but it's not really the OS that presents the majority of risk, it's the applications. Microsoft is no saint there either, but when most FOSS stuff is developed and managed in public repositories by semi-anonymous contributors, you get something like the SolarWinds hack happening all over again.
I don't want my desktop to go anywhere especially not on my mobile devices. And I never asked for cloud storage, that I especially don't trust, or find useful, since my upload speed is 20mbit on a good day.
Not sure what you're getting at exactly, so I'll clarify my point a bit: I can get full-fat MS Office on a desktop (Windows or Mac, for the moment), and then do less intensive edits or just plain viewing anywhere. That's portability. If I were to use Linux (and the gods know I've tried!), I'd either have to use a less powerful / less performant web version of MS Office or deal with eventual compatibility issues. I couldn't even get a table to come over from Word properly last time I tried OpenOffice. Promptly rebooted back into Windows.
Again, admittedly that's Microsoft's fault with respect to their file formats, but on the other hand they are actually expanding features for their Office suite too.
As far as 'cloud' goes, it's really just server-side storage with integrated layers of redundancy and protection. Obviously if it's online it's
online, but 'cloud' doesn't mean that something has to be off-premises. Private clouds are a thing, and for example, my employer runs several inside our intranet, and has contracts for several external ones as well. Those that have been issued phones absolutely make use of the functionality.
On a personal level, I guess it depends. Realistically your 'information' has already been mined; yes, putting it in the cloud makes that easier, but again, you'd have to keep your stuff air-gapped (literally) to have any chance of privacy.
