Microsoft is encouraging us to pay continuous per-year fees (like the EA agreements for SA licensing), taking that money, and then failing to provide us with properly tested updates (i.e. service packs)? I find this offensive - we're paying every year, and yet getting less service than when we paid a one-off fee.

CU's are not tested as well as service packs, and are thus not comparable as a "replacement". I want that testing to have been done, even if it does miss things, before deploying updates.