No doubt the next trick from Microsoft will be to rent out the next operating system,

Microsoft has already begun pushing "Cloud applications" in which the program is NOT ON YOUR DEVICE and neither is your data or documents. Everything is stored in the "Microsoft Cloud," and your device is useless if your connection is down.

A number of other "cloud" providers have also been doing the same for a little longer.

For Microsft, the main push has been for "enterprise" users, and it does offer the convenience of having an external provider responsible for maintaining and updating the program software, with the possibility of flexibility in the number of devices that can use the setup, but at the cost of "monthly rental fees" in place of a one-time purchase cost for each user of each program.

A side "benefit" is that everything your device does must be transmitted to/from the "cloud," and everything you've done is in the hands of a "third party" you have to trust to keep it secure. (The transmission can be hacked, just as your device can. The third party (cloud provider) can be hacked and is a bigger target, but can also be ordered - by just about anyone with a couple of attorneys - to reveal everything they know about you, which is just about everything - without even telling you that your "stuff" has been handed over to someone else.)

It also means that when the cloud provider decides a program you've learned to love is obsolete they can completely block you from using it, just by taking it off the cloud site, and can then "raise the rent" and force you to use their newest hallucination - no matter how bad it is.

John