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Why Does Everyone Hate Microsoft?
MrSplog asks: "I'm doing a short project on Microsoft and its impact on society. A considerable part of this project has been looking into people's perceptions of Microsoft and the heavily negative bias of that perception. Since Slashdot is one of the world's forefront leaders on Microsoft hatred, I wanted to know: just why do you hate Microsoft? Please be as descriptive and as thorough as you like. Counter arguments and positive comments are also appreciated."
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
An easier question would be "Why not?"
Envy and Jealousy.
Tieing the web browser to the operating system and creating Active X controls, and then putting no security on them, ushered in the era of spyware and caused tremendous suffering for users and the tech support people scrambling to try to stamp out the spyware.
Because they use their monopoly status to crush competitors, and therefore retard growth and innovation throughout the entire software industry.
That's all.
They've crippled inovation in favour of maintaining a monopoly for YEARS now. And I'm not just talking about having alternative OS and word processors. They have been THE_PRIMARY_OBSTACLE for software (and hardware) being truly useful and allowing choice and the possibility of enhancing our lives and contributing to the human condition.
Plus the windows interface sucks.
Believe it.
One of my biggest complaints is how they FORCE people to upgrade to increasingly fragile, vulnerable versions of Windows. They make it so that software vendors mush move along, thus leaving odler versions behind, and ensuring that new versions do NOT run on older versions of Windows.
They have also really upped the "Big Brother" role, where in some instances, perfectly legitimate installs of XP have been shut down by MS's update servers, claiming that they were bootleg or pirate copies. Then just TRY and get MS to unlock your system...? Have your credit card ready. NO THANKS!
There are still a lot of systems running under 98SE that are working just fine, thank you. I don't need or want to spend $200 for a version of windows that is more likely to "break" my currently running software, and won't run on otherwise perfectly viable/functional hardware. I also do not like the "phone home" and "Big Brother" aspects that are built into XP and the new Vista. My 98SE runs everything I need.
Oh, and don't even get me started on their super-vulnerable browser and e-mail clients.
That's my 3c worth.
Willie...
one could argue Microsoft products are shoddy because they support a mind blowing number of hardware configurations. Apple's job is much easier...but do you want to be restricted in what kind of computer you want? If it was up to Apple, they would be still on slow powerpc chips but it was the competition in the PC world that finally made them see the light. And you have to thank Microsoft for at least part of that.
Firefox Power http://firefoxpower.blogspot.com/
They would be gone... the fact is that Microsoft's marketing & legal practices keep them moving. It gets to the point where it has nothing to do with how good their software is.
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
Monopolies produce poor quality products at high prices - that's what monopolies do. So yeah, no reason to hate Microsoft anymore, we know what they are.
Yeah, that makes about as much sense as saying "murderes leave a hell of a mess - that's what murderers do. So yeah, no reason to hate OJ Simpson anymore, we know what he is."
It must have escaped my attention when it became the case that the simple realization that a person or company has committed a crime somehow excuses it.
Microsoft is a convicted monopoly. There is no more reason to hate them required. They will always be a convicted monopolist; you don't somehow get un-convicted after a couple of years. The penalties they had to accept (at least in this country) may have been little more than a slap on the wrist... but that doesn't change what they are. And it's something they only share with a few other companies in the history of this country.
I mean, why hate Enron? Why hate the tobacco industry? Why hate any company?
When it's not just your opinion that they've hurt people, but when it's in fact been proven that they hurt people, then I'd say that's a pretty good reason.
(That doesn't mean I hate Bill Gates; I think he's done a lot of good things. But he has not surrounded himself with the most scrupulous people, and he himself has not always acted scrupulously in business.)
Embrace, extend and extinguish, is only a symptom of the real issue. The real issue is that Microsoft fails to subscribe the culture that most geeks subscribe to which is simply: Technical freedom. We want to be able to do whatever we want with technology, and we dont want anyone getting in our way. Microsoft is constantly getting in the the way of technical freedom as it tries to bully its way into being important instead of innovating its way into importance... Microsoft refuses to be in a support role and wants to be the center of the technical world regardless of technical merit. That getting in the way and self centered attitude is the reason everyone *I* know hates Microsoft.
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
MS conducts themselves as a bully.
Nobody likes a bully.
I think that for many people Microsoft is hated simply because it's the biggest target. Personally I don't exactly 'hate' Microsoft. I think their OS could be quite a bit better and that they could do a lot more to help their users out. Why do I think that about Microsoft and not, say, Apple? Well because Microsoft's what everyone uses. Frankly I could care less what Apple does, because I don't use it, no one I know uses it, and the computer I help set up as a part-time job don't use it.
So I look at those computers and I see how often they crash, how virus prone they are and the natural impulse is to blame the OS for not being more crash and virus-proof. And since in every case the OS is Microsoft Windows I've developed a bias from only seeing Window's fail. I've never seen another OS crash, I know they exist, so therefore my OS must be worse. It's the good old fashion 'grass must be greener, 'cause mine looks pretty yellow' problem.
I'm sure that if I were to use Linix or Apple (*dons protective flame suit*) I would encounter just as many problems as Windows. They'd be different problems, but there would be problems none-the-less. Frankly I expect my computer to run perfectly and without error in spite of what I do to it, and I expect the computer to compensate for other users who are no where near as technologically inclined as myself. Is that rational to expect that much? No. Is it human impulse to expect that much? Of course. So who's to blame for my computer not running as I irrationally want it to? It's much easier to pick a large target that other people pick on and blame them for every problem rather than acknowledge that the problem is at least partially my fault for trying to use the program in a way it shouldn't be used.
Another part of the Microsoft bashing, in my opinion, is the bandwagon syndrome. It's become officially 'cool' to bash Microsoft and so many people who have never had a single problem bash them anyways.
In all honesty Microsoft get's a lot more flak than they deserve. Is their product perfect? Certainly not! Is it supposed to be? Of course not! Do we expect it to be? Oh yeah. Who's easier to blame? Yourself, for having unrealistic expectation, or a large easy to bash company for not conforming to those unrealistic expectations?
Am I saying Microsoft makes the best software? No, there's better stuff out there for advanced users (take, for instance, my FireFox browser I'm using). Is Microsoft's products as good as should be expected of such a large program? I think so.
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
They became a giant by stealing other people's ideas, establishing a status quo of mediocrity, and squashed innovation.
It is frustrating knowing that better products exist that will never get a chance because of their hegemony.
However, I do really like certain Microsoft products. I think Defender is a great idea, perhaps a few years late in the game. MS Office is a great product. Their development tools are good.
And Microsoft has become considerably less evil in recent years, but they have no regards for standards and make life unduly difficult for a great deal of people. Sometimes it doesn't even serve a financial purpose.
Look at their history with Sun and Java. Microsoft clearly has no respect for other's rights or licenses. And they want the internet to be something proprietary that they control, again even if it costs them money, and they don't gain anything from it. They just want to control things. By pushing for browser-specific tags, and refusing to conform to web standards, every webmaster on the planet is put out to design around both standards and Microsoft.
Does Microsoft make money of IE? No. They give it away for free, while throwing butt-loads of money developing it. So why continue to spend money fucking the entire internet over? Because they are bullies who like to remain the king of every hill they can find, even if it means forcing customers into inferior products.
That's why.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
They created a platform that commoditized the underlying computer and jump-started a PC revolution. An independent developer can reach a market of half a billion desktops with a single binary. How neat is that?
Now, in theory Java, OpenGL, POSIX, J2ME, XHTML/CSS, etc. are supposed to allow you to do portable development and treat the underlying platform as a commodity, but the problem with de jure standards is that you'll either be stuck with a standard that lags far behind the state of the art or a standard that is loosely adhered to, and is rife with incompatibilities, despite passing all of the compatiblity tests people can think up. Maybe you've seen standards that work, but every single one that I've dealt with has cost me or my company a lot more than simply targetting a Microsoft platform with 90% installed base does.
It seems like the best way to get commodity behavior is for one company to win and push a homogenous platform. Of course, it sucks when you have 10 vendors trying to do that and none of them have any majority marketshare. Microsoft's neat because they won, and won so well.
What Microsoft did with PC hardware is similiar to what open source does with essential digital infrastructure: it commoditizes them by becoming the one standard reference implementation. Where a mature open source product exists, the only market for proprietary software in that segment seems to be niches.
One poster said without microsoft we wouldn't have nice PC's and an environment which just works. I hate microsoft for the future that has been delayed by a good decade. For all the bloody inconsistencies between browsers, which are still present I hate them. Things like Ajax enabled Apps would have been possible earlier if these issues hadn't been so bad at first. Good on Google for making their Web Toolkit so I can program in Java and create Javascript compatible with most browsers out there. If Microsoft had used their position responsibly from the word go and encouraged or stuck to established standards for their browsers and documents we would not have had the lock in we did. Ever hear the phrase, "Oh we'd like to use XXXX software but it's not compatible with Microsoft XXXX". Yeah, I hate them for locking me in, and I hate them for making other companies trying to compete look like the bad guys for not having compatibility with proprietary obscure formats. Reboots. Maybe that's my biggest gripe. Bloody 3 Reboots on some of those Service Packs.
Microsoft is a convicted illegal monopolist.
Microsoft was let off the legal hook by a fortunate change in administrations - more like a fortunate failure to honor the democratic will of the people.
Microsoft spends billions of dollars around the world lobbying for initiatives that restrict and suppress open standards and free software, guaranteeing expansion of its monopoly worldwide and into emerging and developing markets.
Bill Gates may be attempting to use his money to make a positive impact in this world in order to whitewash his legacy in his old age, but had governments and businesses and people invested in open standards and free software instead of the monopolist's products, we would still have Bill's money in our collective pockets, developing our economies, educating our children, and feeding our families.
The insecurities of an aging robber baron are little consolation for the great human and natural resources he has squandered through ruthless malice, contempt for law, personal aggrandizement, and cronyism.
How'd I do?
> if it wasn't for Microsoft, we would probably still be using IBM PC's.
That's just plain wrong. IBM opened up the architecture of the PC, so that anybody could make compatible products. Some engineers at Texas Instruments, frustrated by the shortcomings of the "nearly compatible" TI-PC, started Compaq. THAT is why we've got so much variety in the computer industry. Microsoft was just willing to sell to anybody.
It's a simple question to answer.
...I think it smells better in here too ;)
Every encounter I have with anything related to Windows or Microsoft makes my life harder.
Our entire office switch to Macs a few months ago & now I never hear the dull thud of someone beating their head against the desk.
* Game Over * High Score: 264,846,927 -- Your Score: 14
Notepad?
My UID is prime... is yours?
if several other OS's didn't exist which run perfectly fine on tons of hardware (*BSD and Linux). And the sad part is, M$ has all the vendors producing drivers SPECIFICALLY for their operating system. All they have to do is provide a stable kernel and easy/efficient module system for these drivers, and they'd be golden -- every advantage is on their side there. This opposed to Linux and *BSD, who are still more or less reverse engineering many of their drivers.
Not intending to take anything away from your post, I would just like to say that Microsoft's monopoly position is not the problem, nor is it a legal issue (as such). Its the leveraging of that monopoly to gain market share in other markets. (also possibly the use of that monopoly to maintain their monopoly, - I'm pretty sure that's an antitrust issue).
1) A company that charges $150 per phone call for problems with its software, has no incentive to create decent software. In fact, they get paid to write poor software. .net as a "Business Solution" as if we are all just stupid and don't recognize it for what it is: A bloated Framework designed to sell more Microsoft servers and software and a feeble attempt to kill java. NOT a software framework to solve your business problems.
2) Standards in Web Design cost the industry Billions just to write specific Mikeysoft Explorer Code.
3) The free Virus/Malware kit features since 1998 that this company just can't seem to fix with all the PhD's it hires and fundamentally, doesn't understand why LINUX, SELinux are going to become the defacto standard in CIA and Corporate computing security.
4) The Endless nights of pages way back when I was a Mikeysoft dork admin, just to reboot a computer at 3AM, EVERY night for 2 years. Some things never change.
5) The balls this company has to push the industry
6)The whole Microsoft Office thing. Gad where do I start? How about Incompatible with Itself, specifically designed so that Excel 97 Macro's don't quite import perfectly into 2000.
7) DICTATING to everyone that Windows 2000 is no longer supported, we refuse to fix bugs in our software unless you upgrade. If you don't we do not care if 2000 meets your business needs, our shareholders demand you buy licenses for all your stuff AGAIN.
8) Reboot the OS everytime you make a friggin change. Reboot! Reboot! Reboot! Reboot!
9) Trying to Kill Linux with the whole trusted computing thing and working on proprietary BIOS'es. How SAD.
10) And last but not least....creating legions of Idiot Admins that can't do anything unless they are lead around by a OK or CANCEL button. God help them if they don't have a setup Icon someplace! One company who single handedly has put the US back into the Dark ages while the rest of the world MOVES ON without us.
-Hack
Thanks Mikeysoft for all the fun and thank god I left that fun to everyone else 12 years ago when I switched to Linux.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
I don't hate Microsoft. I think their products are often very good, given that software from any vendor tends to suck in various ways.
I *oppose* Microsoft because they have a monopoly position in markets with high barriers to entry. In this situation, competition suffers, and without competition we get stagnation. It is a good thing for me to spend my efforts towards increasing competition rather than decreasing it, which generally requires opposing Microsoft.
How we arrived at this situation is not very relevant. It's partly Microsoft's doing, partly not. The computer industry suffers from structural network effects that drive the marketplace towards monopolies; that's not Microsoft's fault. But Microsoft certainly did (and does) many ethical and unethical things to reach and maintain its position.
People tend to think that if you oppose Microsoft, you must also hate them, but it's not so.
While we're arguing hypotheticals, I'll point out that if it were really up to Apple, IBM would have put the necessary resources into developing low-power and high-speed PowerPC chips, the lack of which being what drove Apple into the Intel transition. If there were no Microsoft, and as a result, the same level of R&D going into today's x86-derived processors were instead used to develop the PowerPC line powering Apple's presumed monopoly, then the Intel transition would not have been desirable.
You're right in that competition is a good thing; I'd be just as concerned by an Apple monopoly over the PC market as I am by the current Microsoft one. But I think the parent was saying (and I agree) that they are Microsoft's anticompetitive behaviors which earn that company such widespread disapproval.
I was working in Japan, near Tokyo, for a company that manufactured medical imaging equipment - MRI, CT etc. At one point I had to create a small team to work on technical documentation, which found us setting up several PC's with Windows. One of the people I had on the team was a Chinese gentleman, who had left China where he was a college professor.
One day, his computer had a typical Windows lock-up & bluescreen and he asked me for help. As the box rebooted, I held down the keys that let you bypass the initial splash screens and go right to the desktop. He was surprised and I asked why? He said he didn't imagine you could avoid the splash screens if you wished and I told him, sure, why not...they don't do anything but advertise MS Windows. He thought for a moment and then smiled and said "Ah...brainwashing!"
I had to laugh, of course. After all, who better to cut to the truth of why those screens were there, than someone who had left his homeland in an effort to avoid a lifetime of such treatment.
MS is for MS...never customers. This has always been the situation and one many of us are not comfortable accepting.
Other reasons:
- MS makes a habit of rewriting history (Gates did not write DOS, etc).
- Investing in MS is risking having your own money used against you in the marketplace.
Basically, my "hatred" (*hate* is such a strong word... i would prefer disgust) stems from several different things:
-stagnation: Microsoft is responsible for a stagnation of innovation on the pc. Ranging from the _very_ late adoption of technologies (example: USB) to the complete ignorance of standards(html, css), they have hurt innovation
-interoperability/lock-in: the small changes in the SMB-protocol from version to version are jsut there to block interoperability. same goes for NTFS.
-sucky products: none of their releases are good. Almost every single product they have released begins to get useful a year after the release, when the most annoying bugs have been fixed. I could tolerate that with a small software-hut which _needs_ the money NOW, but Microsoft as enough money to wait till the product is really ready for the market.
-sucky products/bloat: I don't think that luna should eat away 140Mb of my RAM. I don't think that Word 2004 offers enough new features to warrant a tenfold increase of RAM-usage compared to Word 97
-lies: Microsoft lies. See their FUD about linux. See what the "great business deals" and "alliances" have gotten the companies Microsoft partnered with: every single company that worked with Microsoft lost.
-Content industry's bitch: DRM in every format, downscaling of videos, etc. _I_ am the customer, not the MPAA.
-arrogant CEO: Balmer must go.
-arrogant company: A company that want's to crush and kill everybody else is mad. Competition yes, killing for the killing's sake: NO.
And how is that different from Google's goal to have every bit of the internet go through its engines? When Google wants every advertising dollar to go through one of its services, including radio and print ads. People hate Microsoft for petty reasons. Something went wrong on a computer they were doing something important on and it left a bad taste, now they read sites like this that spew Microsoft hate and that's all they get. And before you say I'm just a MS fanboy, I've been working w/ Linux and OSS for over 10 years and contribute regulary.
I would argue that it was AMD that forced intel to be much better. It was the new intel that forced apple to switch. ironically, all 3 game consoles now use IBM cpu's.
Firefox Power http://firefoxpower.blogspot.com/
1. You can't "steal an idea"
2. In its current form Defender is just another after-market anti-spyware product; they should make Windows more secure in the first place. How is what they are doing with Defender different than what they did with Media Player or Internet Explorer?
3. They develop IE to stay competitive (now that there is competition again). They don't want people going to FireFox or whatever else so they try to improve IE.
I'm ambivalent toward Microsoft products. For the most part they get the job done, which is fine with me. I'm much more comfortable in a Unix environment, but Windows isn't horrible.
I like the fact that Windows has become a standard and that Microsoft has a huge market share. Most people here see this as a negative, but what they probably don't realize is that without a company like Microsoft having a huge majority of the market share, PC's would be substantially more expensive and less powerful than they are today.
Imagine if we had never standardized on an Intel platform. I seriously doubt that home computing would have taken off to the extent that it did, because so many people buying the same computer drive the price way down due to economy of scale.
Windows and Microsoft, by being the standard, help drive down the cost of PC's because people who would otherwise never consider purchasing a PC will now do so because Windows exists.
This isn't due to anything that Microsoft did in particular, other than protect their market share. But it had to happen, and I'm glad that it did, and that the personal computing world isn't split into eight different, incompatible standards. (Like it was in the early 80's.)
Do I wish that Unix or Amiga had become the PC standard instead? Sure. But no company was actually willing to get behind those platforms and push them until they were dominant. This is the value that Microsoft provided, and why they can continue to charge for Windows today.
You'll see a similar thing happen with Blue-ray / HD-DVD. One might be a much better standard than the other, but until either one dominates, neither is particularly valuable to me, or the average consumer.
So before hating Microsoft, ask yourself if you're better off with that nice, fast $400 Linux PC built from parts from several competing manufacturers, or whether you'd rather that no company had a "monopoly" and that your same Linux PC were half as powerful, half as reliable, and cost twice as much.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
I'll admit Microsoft products aren't perfect, hell they have a lot of problems. But I mean, claiming that every alternative you've used is better? I think that's complete bullshit.
I know a lot of people on here look at Linux with adoring eyes, but come on, it's not ready for the desktop. I want to install an OS, and have it work. My printer. My camera. My weird NIC. My DVDRW burner. My 2 month old Video Card. Maybe I should go Mac then? That really doesn't solve the problem because it's hardware controlled (though I do have a Mac and love it). But Mac's office suite is - surprise! - Microsoft Office. Open Office sucks, period. Make it fast on OSX and maybe i'd say otherwise.
Anyways, the whole point of this is that claiming that all alternatives available are better is a pretty broad and stupid statement. I would say I even enjoy Office 2007 quite a bit.
Dude, no. Microsoft makes shit software because they can. Period. The market will tolerate it, so Microsoft has absolutely no need to put any more effort into it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I hate Microsoft for some very simple reasons
In short, due to their poor products they've trained three generations of computer users to think that computing is inherently mysterious, and computers are inherently unstable.
I know of operations and management people that think it's normal to reboot UNIX systems and J2EE servers on a nightly basis. When you inform them that a little bit of effort could solve the problem, they calmly look at you and say, "What problem?"
And why is AMD considered a competitor, while IBM and Motorola are not? Because Windows (and all the software that runs on Windows*) only supports AMD's chips!
*This is where the "but NT ran on PPC!" argument fails.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Not really. Thik about it - Microsofts successes are in marketing, not software design. And its not like linus or the BSD people looked at Windows code and said - oops - not going to do THAT!
No, its users who had to pay for crap who complained the loudest. "%^%$!!!! Windows ate my homework|thesis|report!!!"
For those of us old enough to remember writing VxD's in C in Windows 3.1, the only 32-bit flat compiler available was Watcom, which suited us just fine as it was far superior to the uSoft compilers if its day. When Win32 came out (mandatory in Win95), Microsoft wanted that market and had their own barely operable 32-bit compiler. They required "Dynamically loadable" VxDs for all 32-bit apps. The new Microsoft linker (required to build VxDs from already-compiled object files) accepted the same COFF object files as the old linker as well as the new proprietary object file format produced by Microsoft's compiler.
"Somehow," the new linker had all sorts of bugs in its handling of COFF but handled the proprietary format just fine. EVERYONE writing windows drivers had to switch. Don't forget that writing drivers usually requires a lot of compiler pragmas that have to be redone to port from one compiler to another.
Now, perhaps this was a mistake rather than an abuse...
1. Up to that date, even Microsoft had been using the Watcom compiler. (You don't really think they wrote all their drivers in assembly)
2. The choice to make the old VxD format inoperable in the new systems was totally elective and synchronized to their theft of the compiler market. In fact, for a few product releases, we actually had a Watcom-based driver with 90% of the code and a "proxy" built with the Microsoft compiler just to trick the system into allowing it to work.
This is one of many many stories where Microsoft has used their dominance to bully their way into a business, notwithstanding the competitors who were cleaning their clocks on a previously level playing field. They did this to the detriment of their customers for sure as well as to the people that had built a legitimate business with a superior product.
You must be using some seriously messed-up software.
Even among the big closed-source names, Adobe photoshop kicks butt over anything Microsoft produce. Then there's all the pro audio or 3D graphics software which is amazing. Even more amazing is how tiny independent Mac developers have been doing a better job than microsoft for a couple of decades. Or the software you could get for the Amiga. Very little of this is Open Source, but there are/were tons of amazing third-party apps.
... and then they built the supercollider.
I'll believe that when Steamboat Willie becomes Public Domain, and does so without any protest from Disney -- not before.
Similarly, I'll believe Microsoft has changed if and only if Ballmer gets fired, Microsoft stops trying to subvert open standards and abandons its proprietary ones, and stops spreading FUD against Linux.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Almost all proprietary software is shit for the same reason Microsoft's software is shit - the people who create it have a monopoly on its creation. These broad-based open source projects, as you call them, have that one thing that proprietary software doesn't - competition. If I write some shit code for an open source project, chances are the devs won't accept it. It's not that they don't appreciate my contribution, it's that there are probably a half dozen other people who are more than happy to write something better, or improve on what I have written.
That's what copyright is, it's this government issued monopoly on copying, and the result of the government issuing monopolies should be pretty obvious by now: poor quality for high prices.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Actually, most users are stupid. If the message box asked for confirmaton that they would like to eat boiled dog, they would hit Yes. Windows, for the worse, is the OS of the uneducated, "just give it to me now and easy", masses.
"What luck for the rulers that men do not think." - Adolph Hitler
The Windows operating system is like a skyscraper built on a weak and swampy foundation. It sways and it creaks, and it requires massive amounts of labor to make it stable. Windows is overly complicated spaghetti code built on ancient legacy structures (eg. the registry in XP). The amount of money spent on maintaining this monstrosity of an operating system is a drag on the high tech economy. Microsoft employs a huge number of brilliant programmers, who labor to hack windows into a usable structure. The effort of those programmers would be better spent working on other more elegant and technically sound projects.
The only way Microsoft will end up with a truly modern operating system will be if they nuke the old system and start from scratch, the way that Apple did with OS X. They could then support legacy applications using some form of emulation or virtualization. If they did this, they would decrease the crippling complexity of windows, and would likely dramatically decrease their development costs, while at the same time increasing security and stability.
Also, I don't entirely agree with the argument that Windows is complicated because it has to support such a wide variety of hardware. If an operating system has a clear and open way of interacting with hardware, then hardware companies will write their drivers to that clear and open interface, and the operating system will easily be compatible with a wide variety of hardware. In some sense, a clear and open hardware and software interface will bring simplicity rather than complexity.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
OpenOffice.org isn't the best alternative to MS Office. It's the most similar alternative.
The alternative to MS Office is a whole bunch of different programs, depending on what you want to do. Scientific papers? LaTeX. Newsletters? Scribus, PageMaker, etc. Ordinary business documents? Wordperfect. Photo editing? Photoshop. The list goes on.
As for this statement:
I want to install an OS, and have it work.I'm totally amazed that you have the audacity to say that, in reference to Windows, here. One of people's biggest complaints about Windows has been that you can never be sure that it'll work, even if it did before.
http://outcampaign.org/
Microsoft products as a rule aren't stable, are expensive, Aren't secure inspite of draconian security, often aren't compatible with other Microsoft products, are often hard to configure(couldn't get the new machine I built on line, did I mention I hate XP?), and they always love to harass you constantly about how important and how much it's to your benefit to update which is a pain if the machine is off line. I can go on but you can get the picture. Compared to Microsoft I find Macs a joy to use. The downsides are they aren't nessaccarily stable with Windows ported software, although they tend to be rock solid with native software. Limited software availible, it's what keeps me using Windows. And limited options for upgrading, can't build your own. Granted their stock machines tend to be pretty sweet so it's not that painful. They used to be expensive but for prebuilts they have gotten quite reasonable. Did I mention they are actually fun to use?
Am I dumping Windows? Wish I could. They are threatening again to go totally internet based after Vista. That may be the final straw to get me to dump Windows. Gee we can't make it secure on the internet so lets go internet only! That's a trainwreck I'd prefer to avoid. The real reason to go internet and subscription based is profit. Already people have been questioning for years why upgrade when the current version does what I need? Hey I'm using a three year old version of Open Office and I'm happy. Other than graphics and security there aren't many reasons for most to upgrade. They'd like to lock everyone into a pay as you go model. Look at it this way. Say $80 of your computer purchase is OS, Vista is more but I don't know the numbers on it. Okay that's a one time $80 you make off a customer who if you are lucky will upgrade on average every two years. Let's change that to a flat $20 a month. Well within that same upgrade cycle they just paid you $480. You don't have to be an accountant to see why Bill Gates is so desperate to switch to pay as you go. Even at $10 a month they'd tripple their revenue on new systems. Add Office and other products into the mix and the average user could find themselves paying $50+ a month to uncle Bill instead of say a average of a couple of hundred a year. If they pull it off make sure you own Microsoft stock. Personally I hope people revolt and refuse to accept the pay for life model they want. Personally why I switched from Office is there's too much garbage I don't need so why do I need constant upgrades?. Everytime I slipped, I'm a lousy typist, and hit the wrong set of keys it would do something I didn't want. Open Office just plain works and no stupid paperclip or the godawful red type showing me every "mistake" I made including proper names. Drove me nuts. I think the latest version of Open Office has the red type but it's easy to turn off. Some people love Microsoft products but most of us see a lack of options. They have an army of programmers and they still can't write a stable secure OS? I have no sympathy.
The *only* way Microsoft could gain my respect is to realize that they are *a* player in the market, that customers have a right to their own information regardless of which software was used to produce it, and finally, they realize that vendor lock-in is evil.
they give out a feeling to others that they are the only people that should write your software!! Run on their OS or pay the price of being dominated and forgoten..
They also seem to patent everything you could imagine from configuartion configurations to well the little key on your PC keyboard with the windows logo.. Its a "PC" keyboard not a fooking Windows device. Then they make deals with vendors to support only their own OS so any compitition gets squished.
Lets be honest, I do still use windows from time to time but only cause of the above mentioned.
Atleast you got Halo for your Mac( or are getting it ). A similar exmple is when Netscape was kicking ass in the browser market. There was this little company called DimensionX who had a cool development system for multimedia applications written in Java. IIRC, they were doing something with Netscape too and it had to do with developing Java applets or something. Well, Sun Microsystems wanted to purchase them to help show what Java can do but Microsoft wanted them too. Only Microsoft wanted them to kill them and stop Java from getting recognized as a useful tool. The bidding war was on and when all was said and done, Microsoft ended up with DeminsionX for millions and terminates its Java products. They did the same with a company called Coopers & Peters.
So if a technology is growing which is outside of complete control my Microsoft, they go out and purchase and terminate those companies leading the way.
Heard of OpenGL? Well Microsoft can't have a cross platform 3D tool getting developers excited. They must come up with another 3D system which will ONLY RUN ON WINDOWS.
Got 80% marketshare in handhelds( PalmOS ). Microsoft start seeing all the other dbase vendors shipping dbases clients for PalmOS so Microsoft releases MS Access lite for WindowsCE, which nobodies heard of. Fast forward 10 years and you find that Microsoft has lost over $8 billion on WindowsCE just to dominate the handheld market. Ie, they bought their way into the market with $10's of billions over about 10 years.
This guy wants to know why people hate Microsoft? He/she should look at how Microsoft pretends to "compete" in the market. Hint, they don't compete and do EVERYTHING they can legally and sometimes illegally to stop the reall innovators from making their product sucessful.
And lets not even go into how they steal other companies IP and then after 5-10 years when the company has no more customers and exists only as an owner and a lawyer, they pay out a few million in a "settlement".
IMO, Bill Gates, Steve Balmer, and the rest of the crew are snake oil salesmen. They use Microsoft to crush anybody and everybody they decide is a threat to the money train called the Microsoft Windows monopoly.
You are very lucky to even hear of Microsoft doing a Mac version of a product they've purchased. Given how they hate that Apple is making a sucess out of the iPod, I wouldn't doubt that EVERY Microsoft product for the Apple is heading for the chopping block. IMO
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Without a dominant OS, issues of compatibility would be a thing of the past. Even different versions of Word have incompatibilities. If different OSes ran different software, they would all have to decide on a common format, like ODF, and the documents would be interchangeable. As it is now, MS changes things around in it's proprietary Word format and doesn't let anyone else in. MS stifled web development over the past 5 years because they stopped developing Internet Explorer. They beat the competition (Netscape) and then had nothing to push them (or copy from). Now that Firefox has revitalized the browser wars and Google is fighting on the internet front, we are suddenly coming upon Web 2.0. Applications online are the beginning of an OS agnostic web, which is should be.
MS has been declared an abusive monopoly by the US government. Yet, they are still continuing the same business practices pushing their way into markets based on power, not good products. This is the main reason I stay clear of all MS products. I will not give my money to a declared abusive monopoly. I try to push alternatives in every case I can in the hopes that one day, MS will not be able to abuse it's monopoly because it will no longer be one.
I wasn't going to post in this "discussion", mostly because the original question is blatanly biased, and assumes a particular position is held by the reader, and then asks them to explain it... "So, sir, what would it take to get you to stop eating children?".
However, you're such a blatant appologist that I have to say something.
A corporation is called a "corporation" - and has been "incorporated" - because it has been "given a body" under the law to operate on behalf of a group of persons, and has certain rights AND RESPONSIBILITIES, just as any member of society.
The idea that a company, or its officiers, should put fiduciary responsibility on a pedestal, far above any other responsibilities to the society that permitted its incorporatinon, and on whose sufferance its continued existance depends, is relatively recent. Adherence to a specific duty above all other duties or considerations is the moral equivalent of the "Nuremberg Defense".
If a person can sell their soul, and if a corporation is a person under the law, then surely there are also many recent examples of corporations selling their souls.
-- Terry
They could have still refused the offer? Basically, Bungie's greed got the better of them is what you're saying?
Nice try, but Bungie didn't close down the non-Microsoft versions. There's a thing in US business law where a company must do everything to benefit its shareholders. Seems to me that selling to Microsoft fell under that law.
This article and many others on Groklaw might give you a clue. Microsoft has:
- Destroyed Netscape and BEoS.
- Bribed government officials in India and other countries to use their operating system.
- Funded SCO's litigation against IBM and Linux in general.
- Bribed Novell into betraying the Linux community.
- Forced entire school systems to audit their computers and pay "non-compliance" fines.
- Profited off of Linux and Mac installations without paying royalties by forcing a per computer "tax" on all Licencing 6 customers.
- Slowed down the Internet with their virus ridden software.
- Made it impossible for me to buy the laptop I choose without paying them, even if I do not use their software. (The guy at the store laughed at me when I asked if I could just get the hardware.)
- Supported software patent legislation in Europe.
- Created the most DRM restricted operating system in existence with plans to extend the DRM to MY hardware and encrypt MY information on MY hard drive and give control of all that to someone else (read: Hollywood).
. . . and those are just what I can think of off the top of my head. I am sure I missed more than half, and no, I do not have time to provide links to all of those. You are on your own.All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Apple is on Intel chips because of supply problems with IBM and lack of a good mobile processor. Nothing to do with "the competition in the PC world" or Microsoft.
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I disagree. The amount of hardware is not relevant because Microsoft isn't doing the driver development for various vendors as a rule. If you provide a set of APIs that are strong and valid, then manufacturers can make drivers for anything. In fact, Windows already supports a dizzying array of products.
Remember, I/O is handled through ports, and drivers are only character based, block based, or both. There are no other choices. Whatever your "port" (real port, virtual port, messgae queue, etc.) the process is pretty much direct.
It's not the legions of hardware that destabilizes Windows so much today, it's the legions of old software that users won't part with.
Now I do agree with one aspect mentioned by somebody - Microsoft does shoddy work. Their apps are bloated, their code is sloppy, their desire to be in the public's hands before the product is ready is infamous. Worse, every time they overhaul a product, they mess it up (anybody know how to change the links bar into a drop down menu on the command bar in IE7?). I've taken to using Firefox and OO portable whenever I do my own stuff, but sadly I'm forced to use MS Office and IE for certain business projects - the compatibility just isn't there quite (especially on Firefox).
In fact, compare most of the open source software made for Windows to most any equivalent M$ product, and you find better written software. Some of it has problems, but I spent the day correcting a glitch in Office 2000 that crashed Word every three words you typed.
Microsoft is in a position to make a very usuable system that uses far less HDD space, but they don't.
I do not "hate" MS, but I will rather not use their software.
1) Proprietary software is not transparent. It is therefore intrinsically less trustworthy than open source.
2) Using MS tends to lead to dependance on MS.
3) MS's business practices suggest they in particular are not trustowrthy, and more likely to exploit dependence on them to my detriment.
4) I resent the fact that their software is bundled by everyone - I want to be able to walk into a shop and have a choice of PCs with different OSes installed.
5) I have found most of their software to suck (with the exception of Excel which is very good) and the OS hard to administer (lack of a single auto update mechanism for all, or almost all, my software in particular).
6) Their security track record, and their other shortcoming, sugggests that their attitude to theis custoers is "the sucks will buy anythings".
I use Windows, I use Word, I use Excel. So why do I despise a company who's products I use every day? Two main ones and a bunch of little ones
1) Bill Gates provided a real world example of the Tragedy of the Commons. He took content created for free by naive idealists and slapped a license on it where the very creators of the software were no longer allowed to use it. MS pretty much invented the EULA as we know it.
2) MS consistently arrives late with a lot of glitz and half a beer. They have not delivered a product since Excel that comes anywhere close to the marketing hype or to the quality of the competing product it is aping. Their entire marketing model is based on selling vapourware. In '82(ish) they got away with selling IBM a product that didn't work. Since it was tiny and the world was what it was, they managed to deliver something close enough through a combination of all-nighters and what Mr. Gates would now call IP theft. Unfortunately, that business model just doesn't scale well to 60M lines of code.
More personally, the history of MS is rife with examples of work that, in a less civilized world, would have had Mr. Gates strung up on the nearest tree. If you want to know why I hate MS find out why
- Bill Gates owns more of MS than Paul Allen.
- DR-DOS took MS to court and won (and consider the impact on MS's own customers)
- Netscape took MS to court and won (and consider the impact on the Internet)
- we have "Patch Tuesday"
- no medium-sized companies partner with MS anymore
- the companies that have partnered with MS in past no longer exist
Bill Gates is the personality of MS. That personality has demonstrated that he will stop at nothing to take home all the marbles including:
- Gradually raising the price of his product from 0.5% of the cost of a PC to 80%.
- Deliberately breaking software his customers have already paid for to create sales
- Deliberately breaking software his customers have already paid for to extend into new markets.
- Flat out stealing technology and claiming it as his own (much more often than he has actually created his own).
- Flat out lying to the customers about the capabilities of the software they are paying for.
- Suing paying customers.
and every nuance of every one of these that you can imagine.
I figure that MS has cost me personally over $100,000 over the past 20 years just in lost time and lost work.
It upsets me that, after seeing MS in action for 20 years, I am (still) dealing with an idiot at work who is fabricating excuses to move a perfectly functional automated process from Linux to Windows. I am livid that this moron is going to get his wish simply because he is willing to yell louder and longer than anyone else in the room.
For all of those reasons, not only do I despise MS, I believe that a company that does actively discourages the use of MS products has a distinct competitive advantage over one that encourages it. The anecdotal evidence is that, over 20 years, the companies that I have worked for that do not depend on MS software are consistently the most successful.
I look at it more as long-term ROI. How much have I spent on MS-DOS, Win3.1, WFW, Win95, Win98, WinNT, NT4, Win2K, WinXP... I'm not spending any more on Vista. They still haven't provided POSIX layers worth programming outside their servers, and I'm not interested in the nuts and bolts of yet another API.
Other vendors invest in keeping up with current standards. They compete on the basis of effectively supporting and deploying packages built to those standards. Thousands of industry engineers and senior developers had input to those standards.
As long as they run useful software and play games, I'll keep using their products, but I'm done spending any more for no useful return. Thanks to hardware requirements, even a free copy of Vista would be a negative ROI, because I'd have to bump up my memory at a minimum.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Let's say that all the restaurants and supermarkets in your neighborhood are taken over by, not only fast food chains, but McDonalds. That's the only place where you can eat. To you, it tastes bad, it's bad for your health, there is little selection, but you don't have a choice: you gotta eat. But you have actually eaten good food in your life and know that better food exists. Wouldn't you be kind of annoyed? Wouldn't you start cooking for yourself and try to create alternatives?
Well, that, in a nutshell is why many people don't like Microsoft and why they are looking for alternatives. It's also why many other people don't mind Microsoft; they don't know anything else.
>> the only responsibility a company has is to its shareholders. The only reason a business exists is to make money for its owners
So call me European but I disagree with you.
A company has responsibility to its shareholders, its staff, its customers and the community in which it operates. While the relative weighting of those responsibilities is difficult to pin down, the relative importance the people running the company give to them makes very clear statements about the company.
As for the other point, many businesses do not exist for the purpose of making money for their owners. Not everybody has an exclusive focus on making money.
I believe that this study is paid (in some way) by Microsoft to have FREE marketing material
Yes, they are smart, having all of us Slashdotter to give them hints on how to start the next marketing campaign
Yes, we hate them because they are good on being in the borderline of all the bad practices they do and yet appease the "normal" user and suck money out of him/her
Gates spend millions on charity (and so please the public), with the money he got from all of us, so he play nice with OUR money. If I want to do charity I decide who gets the money !
They are not constantly bad, unfortunately, they manage to be good enough to continue to be in monopoly condition to abuse developers, resellers, customers, but not too much to have a revolution, just enough to squeeze all possible money out of them
Office is just cluttered. Too many things most people don't use. [...] A simple setting in options for "Basic", "Intermediate", and "Advanced" layout would allow people that want basic use (my Mother) to find what they want quickly, but I change a setting and get the Advanced user interface when I use her PC, then I can put it back just the way she's used to.
This is possibly the worst solution I could imagine to the problem of complex software that is intended for normal users. Can you point to any examples of general-use software (open or closed source) that have successfully implemented a basic/intermediate/advanced toggle switch for its main interface? This idea gets brought up frequently by those with technical experience but who don't design software interfaces for a living (or in their free time, as the case may be). It's an awful idea that only serves to promote the notion that the more complex functionality of the software should be locked away from all but the lords of technology, unavailable to the unwashed masses who are just too unskilled to touch the powerful resources of truly great software.
The reason this idea is bad is that it's impossible to define the subset of software functionality that will never be used by the users you brand as basic or intermediate. While everyone needs the core functionality (for a word processor, things like open, save, copy, paste, print), a large number of basic users need to regularly use functionality you might logically put in the intermediate bucket (headers and footers, tables of contents, tab stops, tables), and a not insignificant number of basic and intermediate users occasionally need the most complex features (mail merge, document comparisons, tracking, and versioning).
By removing these features from the software interface when in intermediate or advanced mode, you're not solving the problem at all. You're postponing and worsening it. As soon as Grandma Mae wants to send out her Christmas letters, or Nephew Ted wants to type out his term paper, you have to preface all your instructions with "turn on advanced mode" at which point they're presented with the mind-boggling array of features that is ostensibly causing the problem in the first place. All of the sudden, the software is unfamiliar again; it's like a whole new program. One can get to insert picture or number pages all right, but where the heck did copy and paste go? And you're back to square one, having accomplished nothing but turned a single software program into three.
If complex software is to be used by inexperienced users, we as software designers must first accept the fact that the users are neither dim-witted nor incapable of understanding complexity. They are simply not intimately familiar with its every nook and cranny. The duty of the software designer is to make complex functionality usable. Be smart about context: only display options that are relevant to the situation. Choose smart defaults and explicitly highlight common configurations. Help shouldn't be an afterthought or even solely contained in an external help file; the software be clear what will be the result of a particular choice. Account for bumbling or exploring users and mistakes: make every action reversible. Error messages should be descriptive and actionable, suggesting probable resolutions.
We have so far to go in software design. Let's not simply route around hard problems, dismissing common users with a switch. Our goal should be to make software accessible to everyone. This is often a very difficult task to design and implement effectively. Accept that this difficulty in software development will always exist, but will pay off many times over in the form of productive and satisfied users. But don't simply turn away common everyday users, they by definition greatly outnumber the skilled technicians, and they deserve the absolute best experience software can deliver.
Because they do not deserve to be where they are based on the quality of their products. They got where they are due to bad, likely illegal, business practices.
They are a symbol of greed gone wild.
The stuff they churn out is still generally of poor quality.
Because too much of the computing world just follows them like sheep. Too many people are blind to the costs that they impose.
They _have_ caused real harm to the computing landscape.
If they ever succeed in achieving complete lock-in, then as we saw with Internet Explorer, they'll see no need to develop or innovate or even serve their customers properly. Computing will just go downhill.
That's the company as a whole. On the front-line they have a lot of good dedicated people trying their best to help customers.
While people complain that microsoft lacks functionality and treats its users like idiots, they miss the fact that they're successful *because* they lack the functionality that will confuse users. We technocrats have a tendency to think that just because we can manually configure network settings everyone else can too. Microsoft makes a product that does what everyone needs it to and they keep the market cornered because of it. The 80% that still use IE use it because they don't have (or don't believe they have) the technical skills to use firefox.
"If it was up to Apple, they would be still on slow powerpc chips but it was the competition in the PC world that finally made them see the light. And you have to thank Microsoft for at least part of that."
Nonsense. Anyone who knows anything about chip architecture thinks that the PowerPC is a superior chip to the x86, and historically it has often leapfrogged the Pentium in performance, having only conclusively lost the performance war in the last few years (mostly due to lack of investment by Motorola and IBM).
Apple switched to Intel chips because Microsoft's support for the x86 platform allowed Intel to invest the big bucks needs to keep the x86 ahead in performance terms, even though it required more work.
If Microsoft didn't exist and Apple had become PC market leader then Intel and all the other chip makers would be investing trillions in PowerPC development, and we would most likely have faster and more elegant chips as standard than we do now.
So you can thank Microsoft for the demise of a beautiful and powerful chip architecture in favour of an inferior but more ubiquitous competitor.
Because they spend most of their time not making it easier for me to use their software, but making it more difficult for me to use the software of anyone else.
MS is one of the few technological companies whose corporate culture has succeeded in empowering the business-oriented types at the expense of the techies-types.
/. : it forces its competition to align to their corporate culture practices, and thus makes us lose some power at our workplace.
At Apple, in free-software projects or even HP and IBM (and remember DEC, SGI...?), engineers and scientists can be quite successful at pushing their own agenda forward, often at the expense of growth, revenue or margin.
This is good for the sense of aesthetics and fulfilments of the techies, but quite suboptimal for pragmatic business purposes.
This is how Microsoft has become the "Emperor", and how, by subordinating the techies to the business guys, it attracts so much hate from us techies, specially on
In contrast, I'm sure most technology-neutral people pretty much don't care as much about MS monopoly.
While I hope Google succeeds and keeps it company motto, it's clear that companies that are driven by revenue and growth have more chances, by definition, of "growing and be profitable" than those companies that also try to drive other agendas in parallel.
1) Their way of introducing file and network standards without making the standards public. (.wma
2) Not complying with other peoples standards.
Bad about Windows.
0) It's hard to avoid buying it.
1) No proper permissions on files, all users can delete your files.
2) Software must be downloaded for all task. The out of the box windows can't even split a file.
4) No package system and no certificates, The way of installing things is to run somefile.exe from somewhere.com. This caues A) lots of add/spy ware B) installing a new program often breaks an old one. C) You never know what you actaully installed, just because it was called zip.exe and came from zip.files.com doesn't mean it actually zips files.
5) No proper shell. You can't script things properly and, more importantly, when trying to help a friend out you can't just give him/her a line to copy paste into a terminal that will make everything ok.
6) Random behaviour. Things "just break" and it takes an expert to fix them; mere mortals are usually forced to reinstall from scratch. Windows also becomes sluggish after a while and "nobody knows why".
7) It spies on its users.
Finally, both Sun and Mac have made good commercial operative systems that both lacks most of the above faults. If they wanted to, Microsoft could too.
Hmmm,
"Standard", Merriam-Webster: "4 : something set up and established by authority as a rule for the measure of quantity, weight, extent, value, or quality".
No, I'd not say that Windows is by any measure a "standard". It may be commonly used, perhaps, but it is NOT a standard. Not by any authority I recognize, anyway.
The Mac OS is not an aberration, either. It is used daily by many people, and companies, and is a very commonly used OS in graphics arts, the sciences, and education. It's use is increasing, as evidenced by a steady increase in sales and marketing figures.
Linux is also seeing an increase in use, and interest, especially overseas. Wasn't it Munich, Germany that just "standardized" on Linux? By dumping Windows?
Go ahead and give your own personal reasons for using Windows, that's fine, I cannot argue with your reasoning - your reasons are your own and you are entitled to them. But leave off the argumentative and insulting pejoratives, they do not add to your credibility. Instead, they diminish it by exposing your bias.
Especially when you offer no evidence as to why you call the Mac OS an aberration.
"Money is truthful. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash." Notebooks of Lazarus Long, Robert A. Heinlein
Microsoft is the first name in computers (now) and Everyone hates #1.
People want to slam on fast food, how often do you hear them say Wendy's? Or Burger King?
People want to slam on POP Music? Britney. You never hear Jessica or Kelly except secondary to the Diva supreme.
How about industrialized nations? USA. Every. Time.
It's basic human nature to hate and despise the Alpha Dog. Anything done by the Betas are considered heroic in contrast to anything the Alpha does to keep hold of their #1 status.
Sometimes, there's fairness in arguing that-- by trying to maintain universal appeal --the #1 dog lacks character. Microsoft products, like McDonald's food, have a sterile, uniform appearance which is tries to be culture-proof to an absolute fault. The #2's, like Apple, Burger King and Christina Aguilera, tend to double up on style (though that doesn't always equate better quality)
Meanwhile, you have the problem with so-called gentiles. Casual computer users are often exposed to Microsoft as their first OS, and come to know it as the OS. Anything which upsets their routine, such as exposure to Linux or even MacOS, is seen as inferior by just being different. Such amplifying the chorus of 'bring down the Alpha' by those who believe they know better.
This is what I believe. Apple has sinned, IBM has sinned, even Linux has sinned. However those were sins carried out in the name of the underdog, and have been forgiven. The sins of Microsoft-- and all alphas --are seen as the sins of a tyrannical ruler, and each one stored in the files to prove that they deserve it when they finally fall. (If ever.)
The Gimp is a great image editor, to be sure. But firing that beast up for a few piddly screen shots is a bit of overkill. Paint is much quicker.
Caldera subpoenad a large number of Microsoft emails and the attitude displayed in them is just reprehensible. They didn't want to compete on merits, or provide a better product. They just wanted to win, regardless of their own merit in the marketplace.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Microsoft has been, and continues to be, a criminal operation. I wouldn't persoanlly care too much if they were only stealing other people's money, but it is darn near impossible to buy a desktop computer from a Microsoft OEM 'partner' without paying for a copy of Windows that you don't want, or need. I'll stop hating Microsoft when I can buy an HP, Dell, IBM, or Gateway desktop computer with no OS and the price of Windows deducted.
With pirated copies of XP I've seen around, installing windows has been rather easy. No annoying activation, and in the early days windows update worked nicely and there was no WGA (it's slightly more difficult now, but not overly so).
Now here at work, I've got about 50 machines with fresh XP Professional reinstalls. Since they've all been reformatted (moving departments), that means that for every freakin' one I've had the authentication fail (it only works once online). To fix it, I need to call MS, talk to a damn machine voice agent, type out the confirmation ID to the machine (about 10-12 sets of 6 digits) on the phone keypad, and then have it reject my number. Then I get forwarded on to tech support in India (judging by the accent) and have to explain that NO, I am not installing on multiple machines etc etc, and have them read out another 10-12 sets of 6-digit keys which I must enter to validate the damn install.
And we're paying customers.
So yes, while the issues of crashing and viruses had previously given me a certain amount of dislike for MS's Operating System, needing to call tech support 50 times (or at least several times for sets of machines on my KVM) has pushed me towards the hate spectrum.