LOL! You're probably not the only one to think so. I'm of the opinion that their programmers have to spend their time on what their bosses tell them to do. When that task is "write a good program to do x, y, and z" I think it works out. Unfortunately, and I think Vista is a good example of this, their bosses have spent too much time on flashy goodies like Aero Glass, as well as DRM, and not enough time on things like WinFS that would have made a really excellent next-gen OS.
I can almost understand Microsoft's desire to go that route. If I sell a machine to a customer, my customer gets a fully constructed and functional unit, steel, electrics, pneumatics, controls, and all. If the customer wanted to copy the machine, he'd have to take it apart, measure and fabricate all the parts, copy all the electrics and pneumatics, etc. My protection against intellectual property theft is mainly that it would be more expensive to make a copy than to buy a second machine. But the cost to copy a piece of software is almost nothing, so I can understand Microsoft's desire to ensure that they don't spend massive amounts of money developing a piece of software that no one ever pays them for. I'm not saying I agree with all their DRM or EULA terms; just that I can understand them wanting to do something about the problem.
Here's a final story you probably won't believe: I had some trouble getting the software I mentioned purchasing earlier to run properly - it worked fine on any given PC, but it would not talk over my network. I called Microsoft, and spoke to a total of three techs for a total of about four hours over several days. As it turned out, the problem was a little setting that a competing product (that I'd since uninstalled) had left embedded in the registry, preventing the Microsoft product from listening for connections on the correct port. The Microsoft techs - at least the last of whom was actually based in the U.S. and was thoroughly knowledgable about the software - spent that time, found, diagnosed, and fixed the problem, even though it was caused by a competitor's product, and got me running, and didn't charge me a dime for the support. So even with Microsoft there can be happy endings :-p
I understand reasonable priorities along the lines you mentioned.
I still think MS goes overboard at customer expense.
The last year or so I've had techs be very helpful--of course at considerable additional expense on my part. Most were knowledgeable. 2-3 were very frustrating.
Over the years of using MS products, techs have been probably 70% frustrating to infuriating as much as the software. But I didn't blame them. It was MS policies I blamed.
SOME of those seems to have improved. But they still have a long way to go.
And I'm more than ready to leave them in the dust though I can't because of the school's software.