back in the mid 1990s Microsoft mentioned some aims that equate to a total vendor lock in which got a lot of angry responses - the current version is called Trusted Computing, and a past one was called Palladium. The aim is to make the hardware and software such that once installed you can't change it but the vendor can via updates etc, they also want to get it so that you can't talk to anyone who isn't using one of their systems. They got into hot water at the time and have been introducing the intended changes slowly via stealth processes.

When MS first introduced the over the Internet verification as against the serial number code on the software package they assured everyone that it wasn't able to disable the software and never would - right, it didn't for a couple of years and then MS WGA was introduced and later versions started killing legit systems because of the poor way it worked.

Now we have Secure Boot as a hardware software lock down on the system, but only for ARM devices - never mind explaining why it's needed on the ARM devices apart from them thinking not many will object. I'm sure that windows 9 or Windows 10 will have compulsory Secure Boot lock down on all devices, just wait and see.