Say goodbye to all that: Microsoft ends Windows-as-a-Service

Microsoft's once-vaunted Windows-as-a-Service (WaaS) is in tatters. Windows 11's introduction last month — and more importantly its proposed servicing and maintenance scheme — did that.The fact that Microsoft bent to the seemingly inevitable should be credited, even if the company took years to reach a cadence that many customers had pleaded for almost immediately. But the failure of the Windows-as-a-service model likely also has a downside, chief among them the tainting of that str