I don't think I ever said there were no advantages to the update service

what concerns me are the ways in which users can get locked into the update cycle - and personally the fact that you can loose something through no fault of your own to which end:

About having to reinstall, there are always exceptions, but I would hope that they would be rare. Software does not usually fail overnight for no reason. Something happened, gremlins in the computer maybe.
you not taking hardware failure on board then? - you do not understand that it is my right to reconfigure my hardware, and if the company penalises me for this, and they are the only company i can think of that does, it is shameful

You stated that if you use the new features… Yes, you have de facto locked yourself into needing to renew should you have to reinstall. If they are important to you and if you do have to reinstall but are outside of the Update Service period, then you will need to renew. Under the old system, you would have had to pay again to get those new features anyways.
missing the point- you would never have lost anything, or needed to renew to reacess...