Ya’ know, they used to be good.
They protected my investment in my software purchases. They protected my privacy. They protected my data. They had a lifetime customer. I was theirs to lose.
Did I tell you how much I enjoy learning to use Linux/Ubuntu? LOL
Their developers (developers, developers, developers) are a pretty smart bunch. Their main problems technically have been from mismanagement of the technical resources. I know some programmers who worked for Microsoft, and they're good.
> They protected my investment in my software purchases.
Back-compatibility was always DOS'/Windows' strong point. Of course, that was one thing they intentionally blew with Vista. Stupid...
> They protected my privacy.
They blew that with WGA, DRM, phone-home applications, and the myriad backround processes that send your private data back to Microsoft Central for examination.
> They protected my data.
Except when they lost it in a blue-screen or "FAT-event" ;-)
> They had a lifetime customer. I was theirs to lose.
... and ...
> Did I tell you how much I enjoy learning to use Linux/Ubuntu? LOL
Welcome to the club. Though I'm more of a Mac/NetBSD/Fedora fan. And to be fair, I still use Windows plenty, mainly at work since my central desktop is XP-Pro. But my work laptop is a MacBook, and all my home machines are Macs, with VMware Fusion virtuals for the WinXP, Win98, MSDOS, NetBSD, and Fedora machines. Adding a (shudder) Vista VM tonight, since I have users switching to Vista I'll have to support.
Microsoft praising Open Source... uh, huh. "It's a trap!" ;-)