I get a little bit annoyed when people imply that MS is stealing anyone's wallet. I personally dislike Windows, so I don't purchase it. You don't *have* to pay for ANYTHING, except food, shelter, and taxes. It's their product, and it's within their right to charge what the market will clear.
The demand curve for their product should be relatively elastic, considering that there are substitutes out there. Some people may not be properly educated about some of them, and some people just have to pay for it because it's bundled, but it's generally accepted that you can avoid Windows if you really wanted to. So if MS decides to increase the price, they'll just be hurting themselves. What they're really banking on is that they've differentiated their product enough from the competition as to where people will see the value in the new price.
As far as "crippling" the OS, it's really a business decision to have one build of Windows that has the ability to disable certain features, instead of having to have 10 different builds for 10 different SKUs. When you go to a concert, you are admitted to the section you paid for, not to the backstage or the Budweiser Booth.
I can see why people are annoyed that they pay for a product, and they're getting the full thing but are only allowed to use part of it. As long as Microsoft is being honest (this of course being a completely separate argument) about this premise, they can sell their software whichever way they want.
Why wouldn't Microsoft just sell one version of their OS then? Because if they did, they would be missing out on recouping consumer surplus. MS's business model is quite strong, and it shows, but their size and relative insensitivity to consumer needs has given it a really bad rap and a wide array of mediocre achievements.