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Why the world hates Microsoft?...

...or at least, some times it seems like that :)

I must confess that I have been in the side of those that hate Microsoft; now, I'm in a neutral position; I neither love it nor hate it. They have done nasty things but they have also made enormous contributions to the IT world.

Some might say that the reason of the shift in my thinking is to have worked in Microsoft for a while, and is true of course! ; But not just because of the fact per se but because I now try to look at many different perspectives at once.

Below are the most common complains that I hear about Microsoft and what I think of them

The blue screen of Death!-Dude, the number of such screens is almost 0 nowadays! So come on, leave your 70’s wig at home and live on the present

Linux is better, and free!
False!
-Linux is for geeks, period. (I’m a geek so no big deal). Even that I openly admit that there are versions of Linux that are quite user friendly nowadays (such as Ubuntu) they are still far behind in usability terms. What “normal” people can achieve with them is minimal. Geeks love to tweak stuff, normal people just want to move on as simple as possible; Linux doesn’t allow “normal” people to do that and whomever claims otherwise lives in a world of complete self denial.

Now the server arena is a different story basically cause most server admins are indeed geeks; so Linux is getting really good positioned here and will continue in that way, no discussion about that. But enterprise class servers will rarely use a “free” version of Linux, and usually the admins in charge of those servers don’t have precisely modest salaries so, there is no such thing as “free” Linux on the enterprise (cheaper, perhaps) .

I hate Microsoft products because they have:
-More viruses
-Bugs
-Driver problems
-3rd party software problems

If you are a good observer what would be the summary of the above complains? I hate Microsoft because everybody uses it! Bingo!. Products that are installed in 97% of the PC’s of the world (such as windows) are of course going to be more prone to have problems being discovered; Why? Dahhh!! Because every body uses them so everybody has their hands and eyes on them; it is that simple; you can't really hate something that you haven't tried.

Most people complain that Microsoft always rolls out mediocre products and then patches them making the life of users and admins miserable. I say, this is true, but everybody does it!!, the problem with Microsoft is that everybody notice their mistakes because everybody is watching them all the time!

The bottom line whether you like it or not is that thanks to Microsoft most of the IT world keeps rolling, not as smoothly as it could, not as secure as it could, not as cheap as it could….but it rolls! And that is what most Microsoft Haters can’t tolerate.

Fortunate for Microsoft, as we say in my home country:
"Del Odio al Amor hay solo un paso / From hate to love there is just one step :)"

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