It wasn't an M$ decision. (Score 1)

The decision to drop the Alpha NT support was not Microsoft's, it was Compaq's. Look at http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?9 90820.pintdump.htm for info. Compaq supplied nearly all of the engineers who wrote the kernel and ported code to the architecture, and now they will be gone. MS says they will still support the platform, but Compaq just cut off an arm and a leg's worth of the project staff. I'm sure Alpha can survive without MS, the question is will Compaq let it. I'm not sure what thier stradegy is, but I hope to see continued Alpha development, afterall they bought DEC for a reason, right?