On the way home from work, what was really bugging me about the change solidified in my mind.
The character builder and adventure tools, as they were, became (quite literally) an invaluable tool in my DMing routine. The books were there simply for their fluff, and I learned to completely rely on the software to track all of the crunchy bits.
Now, with things changing from a purchase that I owned to a service that I do not want to rent, I'm left in the lurch because there's an daunting and immense heap of technical information that I never bothered to learn and that's going to keep coming out at a fairly quick pace.
Yeah, I can go back and start reading the books for the crunchy bits and making characters the old fashioned way, but the more ... satisfying isn't the right word, but it's the closest my brain can currently supply, answer is probably to just stick with what we've got till we get bored with it, or something better comes along.