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Windows biggest strength is also it's weakness. Businesses stick with Windows because of legacy support and familiarity. Windows has a lot of inertia built up, and the business network HAS to keep running. When all the personnel in the IT department are Windows savvy, not so much so on other systems, the IT recommendation will almost always be to stick with the applications and stuff that they know. I think Vista has significantly disrupted that comfort zone.

The college where I work forced us to Office 2007, despite much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the end users, but still has no plans to move to Vista from XP. The IT guys would outlaw Macs on campus if they could, but the photography and graphics arts people have held firm.

From everything I've picked up, the Windows OS is starting to collapse under it's own weight. I know my year old PC at the office is slower than my six year old iMac G4. I also notice little bugs in Windows that I don't find in Mac apps. For example, in Word 2007, I have five documents that I print out for incoming students. All I do is open, print and close them. Two of the documents ask if I want to save them every time, even though I've made no changes. It's a little annoyance, no big deal, but it takes my attention from the student, and I have to go back to the pc and make a pointless mouse click because some stray bit of code in the Word document has produced a flaw. I've done "Save As", copied all the text to a new document and saved it, and it still pops up the little screen asking me if I want to save the changes. The three other Word documents don't do it. It's just one of those annoying little "do another mouse click for no particular reason" things that infests Windows.

I agree with you about Linux as a desktop. Some flavors may be okay, but over all, most Linux desktops require much more personal tweaking. Can't speak to the server side. All I'm running is a four computer wireless, which is pretty seamless.

As to development tools, most of the business applications I've seen seriously suck eggs from a user standpoint. In our system "Datatel" for tracking grades, I have seven classes for which I have to enter grades. Instead of being able to navigate to the "class" menu once, then select a class and enter the grades, I have to go to the Main Menu, select grading, enter the semester, select the class and enter grades. When I enter the grades it kicks me back to the main menu, where I select "grading", enter the term again, etc. For seven classes, it's probably fifty or sixty "make a selection and click the mouse for no particular reason" moments. Your point about the development tools for Microsoft is part of my biggest point about both MS and IT departments. They really don't give a flip about the end user. Poorly designed counter-intuitive applications rule because the IT department wants convenient development tools, and can force a lousy product on the end user.