Microsoft has already said that Vista's successor is projected to be released in 2009. Make enough noise now, and Microsoft might actually remove the DRM.
I will avoid Vista like the plague. Everything works okay without it, so why would I want to change anything?
Once you are in...you can't get out and everything you do is restricted and watched by the Directorates.
And they only operate in ways that benefit their masters who sit in cushy dacha sipping tea by the fire while counting their piles of rubles.
Computers, hell! It's an attempt to gang-ify entire segments of the electronics industry (A/V, gaming, networking). I'm typically an MS supporter but they are really barking up an entire forest of wrong trees.
The last quarter century has been amazing in retrospect. Competing entities have set standards (i.e., CD) and allowed any and all companies to produce goods that adhere to the standard, or there are IEEE standards that all makers follow. The result has been high-quality, high-availability and high-interoperability all at low(er) cost! It is the epitome of the free market working for the betterment of all and should be an object lesson to all junior socialists who think capitalism equates to Pinkerton guards harrassing longshoremen.
Now, obviously, Microsoft wants to call the tune AND limit the number of dancers on the floor via a new set of 'standards' (read: proprietary technology). This isn't some Hardware Compatibility List, this is time-bomb and/or format-bomb sabotage of equipment and interfaces you've already bought and paid for. A bad idea all round and not the best of starts for the Ballmer regime.