This is not surprising. MS seems lately like an eager geeky high school suitor (yes I am female) that is really smart and has some good qualities of which you never get to see because of their approach. (Like insulting you while attempting to ask you out.)
Anyway, what is my point? Well, it seems to me that MS really wants us developers. However, after shelling out bucks on books, software, certification, etc. and realize that all the .NET people you went to school with cannot get employed locally (doing .NET anyway) you see offers that MS is subsidizing the exact same materials (that I just spent several thousand on) for almost nothing to individuals in India. Now, I totally believe in a global economy, but that just feels like rape. Sorry.

Then, there is the user groups. Once upon a time (not too long ago) you could go to local MS product user/developer groups and network, learn things, and once in awhile someone from MS would attend and do a presentation or maybe if we were lucky give something for the raffle. Now that MS has decided they lost touch with and should woo us, most of them have been moved to the MS campus. Not that I don't appreciate the meeting space, or the better raffle, but it is one long product demo most of the time. I have quit going and I personally know 2 other developers that have stopped going for this same reason. We all got tired of product beta demo after demo on knew features we should get ready for and learn, only to have the same feature demo like 4 months later and it has all changed! All for a server, language syntax change, or whatever that won't even be out for another year. It is nice to see where things might go, but every meeting? Get back to me when you figure out what you are doing. Otherwise life is short, I have lots of tech to learn, and no room in my head or time for stuff that is vapor features of not even to beta stage products.

I could go on forever, but I will end it at this: I particularly like how after I got certified it took forever to get my welcome pack this time around. Then I got a stupid survey which made it obvious that they were going to basically incentivise (okay maybe that isn't a word...) and devalue the MCAD certs I did get because they wanted to get the old MCSD's to reup.

Now they have a 'lite' version of VS.NET and SQL server etc. to woo new developers from mySQL and PHP and other free open source products.

Forest for the trees guys. You are losing good developers who used to champion you and your products. I am not atypical in my sentiments.