Microsoft Issues

Microsoft are a difficult company to deal with at the moment. Their office productivity software is ubiquitous, as is the Windows operating system.
As a technology lecturer I get to talk to a lot of people about their software. The following are issues people have, and some thoughts of mine about them.

"Windows is the only OS option"

It's illegal to sell a computer without an operating system. Microsoft invested a lot of time and money in ensuring that Windows is bundled with PCs; other OS options, such as Linux or BeOS, require a conscious install on the part of the user. Most people don't feel comfortable doing this. Microsoft know that open-source systems like Linux and Lindows are their biggest threat, and have altered their strategies to fight this.
Unfortunately, most people confuse 'computer literate' with 'Windows literate'; they seem to be the same thing, when of course they are not.

"Office is the only productivity suite worth considering"

Probably true. Word and Excel on a PC are great. Not so hot on a Mac, but they're OK. I haven't started any Office software for about four months now. The Word file format (.doc) is awful, wasteful and unsecure. However, almost everyone uses it so we might be stuck now.
However, the Open Source community is on the way (yay!) with the mighty OpenOffice, a direct replacement for Office which is free. Yes, free for the good of us all. We're so used to being shat on it is amazing to find that people can be so socially-minded.

"If they are so bad, how come no-one else sells anything?"

Microsoft destroy the competition. They put Netscape under by giving Internet Explorer away for free with Windows. Why? So that they can effectively control most of internet traffic. If they control the traffic they can start altering web standards for their own profit (using Smart Tags). The internet is not meant to be 'owned' for profit.
Microsoft were found guilty of anti-competitive behaviour and ordered to split up into separate businesses. They have since been paying off US congress and settling separate actions state-by-state to (illegally) avoid doing this.

"I can't afford a Mac"

They are expensive. They also have a much lower 'cost of ownership', both in terms of repairs and time trying to sort out mysterious errors.

"If I had to buy software I couldn't make music/I'd use a Mac but I can't get hold of any cracks"

Tough. If you can't afford it you can't have it. You are putting a lot of small companies literally out of business. Propellerhead (makers of Reason) employ about 5 programmers, They can't afford for you to have it for nothing. Don't be so arrogant!
The other standard cop-out is "I'm only using a crack as a demo". Use the official demo then!
It gets on my nerves when I get asked how to make something function, and after a few questions it turns out the software is a crack. What do you expect?

"Pros use Macs, amateurs use PCs"

Not true. Maybe more pros use Macs, but loads of pros and semi-pros use PC music software.

"How can Internet Explorer be a bad choice? What alternatives are there?"

IE doesn't follow web standards, which means that HTML pages don't look they way they should. That puts web designers in a quandary; should they write 'correct' code, or should they write 'incorrect' code so that it looks right to 90% of their audience?
Most people equate Internet Explorer with the internet, and certainly don't see the need in paying for an alternative. Windows now comes with an IE which is impossible to take off the desktop (Dell and IBM have tried to take it off their desktops, and have been prevented from doing so). For PC, the best choice seems to be Mozilla. Macs now have Safari.

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