When did Microsoft buy Motorola?

Motorola Programming Primer

I've been studying on buying a two way radio most of today. This has been a harrowing experience. I decided to purchase one of my own so I would not have to put up with people taking mine away from me or not being able to be issued one. It's a rediculous situation all around to be certain. The guy that programs the radios for all of our job sites is quite a treat and I refuse to deal with him unless it is absolutely necessary. Thusly I decided I need to buy a programmable unit with all of the accessories to program it. Those accessories include the radio, the software, and the cord to connect the radio to the computer. This is not rocket science. It is a programmable radio. I tried to find something at radio shack that is more like what I used to see with all of the numbers and buttons and whatnot but it seems they have gotten out of that line of retailing. Perhaps they just don't show it on their web site. I found out what frequencies we use here at work and I thought I was home free. Not so said the retailer I spoke with. Now I needed to know if it was open squelch / carrier squelch or if it used tones. I called our local radio shop and they indicated that we are on a tone system. I was sure I was in the bottom of the 7th inning and I would soon be asking how quickly they could fed-ex me my new radio. Turns out I need to know some number associated with each channel for the tones. The guy (oddly enough his name was Van) indicated that I might not be able to glean this information since it is typically kept private to keep people from buying radios from other retailers.
As I mentioned one guy does all of our programming but he is the radio gestapo. To obtain the frequencies we use (which likely could have been queried using some fcc database) I had a female coworker call and tell some half truths about the nature of the inquiry. Actually she mentioned that she could get the info and I just stood at her desk in awe as she sweet talked the slime ball. She certainly didn't mention my name and I'm not certain how we would extract this newly necessary information from him to accomplish our goals.
Van said he could read the tones from an existing radio if we could send him one but therein lies the problem. I'd need a radio to send him to get a radio for myself. Van is in Los Angeles, I'm near Atlanta. Even with Fed-Ex that's going to take up to 4 days in the middle of a shut down. In short: not going to happen.

Now on to the Motorola / Microsoft connection.
Everybody uses these things. Police, fire, hotel workers, wal~mart employees, construction companies, delivery drivers, hospitals, the military, the list goes on forever. There are literally millions and millions of these radios in use today. First of all they are unduly expensive. One might think a hundred dollars or so. Not so. It seems as though Motorola has asked online retailers to yank the prices on their products but when one can find a price it is always in the $500 - $1200 US Dollar range. Used equipment can be had at a fraction of the price but then you need to check into the mysterious Motorola RSS programming package. I have as of yet to see a price for that. I'm on hold with Motorola presently out of curiosity. First there is the approximately 2 day wait to get an account set up. Then there is the approval process for your application of the software license. Next up, as my pleasant customer service representative noted, is a charge of "typically between $275 and $300" for a 3 year license. ...Uhhh, no. I think I'll buy from their competitors who have a $89 software package / cable option.

...and someday I swear I will learn C and make this crap open source.