I estimate paying $25 each breaking OS update would be better than paying a subscription, that should be no more than every couple years? Unless the subscription is less than a dollar a month.

Or have to abandon your cloud photo archive that you've been happily paying full price for despite not even uploading any new photos because "we don't support Windows Server 2003 any more" (even though everything continues to run perfectly fine). (Crashplan, if you're wondering.)

Just never leave the house, never build anything, never do anything ever.

Or run it in a VM, or compatibility mode, if I don't want to pay for an update.