Microsoft - fallen empire

In days gone by, I used to really like Microsoft.  I would defend its products against those from other companies, and tell folk how good it was.

How things have changed.

Over the years, Microsoft just keeps dropping support for things that I really wanted to keep, to the extent that I am now getting really fed up with the company.  Indeed, I think the only things keeping me on Windows now are Photoshop and Lightroom...

I get the fact that if you ship something, you have to test it.  That's fair.  But even so, Microsoft do seem to have been aggressively dropping things that I use.  Here are some examples

1. NetMeeting
A very useful feature in XP, you used to be able to have a conferencing session with another PC simply with its IP address.  You had no need to have that PC connected to the global internet, it could stay behind your firewall and be nice and secure. That's been dropped to give us some online conferencing system  I have no idea what information might be getting copied by Microsoft as voice and images go through its servers.

2. MIDI Mapper
Just dropped in Windows 7.  No warning, no alternative provided.

3. The latest one - replace Windows Messenger with Skype
I guess I wouldn't care much about this except that they have taken away Remote Assistance, something I use a lot when helping friends and relatives with their PC.

Three big fails, Microsoft