Look at that headline. "Microsoft to roll virus, (and) spyware into one." Truer words have never been typed.

For many years now, Microsoft has been unleashing its inferior crap upon the world. Shortly after each product's release, they make a marginally better product, which one is forced to upgrade to because of the previous version's horrid inefficiencies, and the cycle continues.

And for all those Microsoft kiddies out there who try and jump on the back of people who hate Microsoft with absurd claims that, "you just don't know how to run the system", or "your hardware was bad" let me make a few points.

• Despite the fact that I do not run Windows on any of my computers at home, and my employer is an all Linux shop, I have been doing free-lance customer support and hardware upgrading, etc for about 10 or 11 years now. Yes, that made me 12 years old when I started, but even then I was visiting friend's places, fixing their computers, and having their parents call me up, and their parents were telling their friends, etc. I remember upgrading people's computers from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95.
  
• I have and continue to run servers on Windows 2000/XP/2003/NT for other customers who require support and insist on Microsoft despite my neverending pressuring to change to Linux.
  
• Most of the systems I have installed Windows on, or taken the time to set up, were brand new systems going out to customers at the computer stores I've worked at. Systems consisting only of decent-quality stuff: ASUS boards, Intel chips, Kingston memory, Western Digital harddrives, etc. And the fact that the system has the same stupid quirks regardless of the hardware completely quashes that argument anyway.
  

I'll leave the antitrust arguments alone: I don't need them.

Microsoft has bullied its competitors (and non-competitors) since achieving enterprise status. They've threatened to audit school boards and make them buy licenses for all of their computers -- including Macs, which can't run Windows, and sued a Linux company because they called their product 'Lindows'.

It's moderately humourous that they also sue phishers. While I agree phishers are maggots and need to be stomped on, I also find it moderately ironic that the very company that created the software that was so easily screwed with to make phishing possible is the same company suing people for doing it.

Maybe that's the point?

Microsoft has charged usually to the tune of $100-400 for Windows with each release.

Each release has been nothing more than a series of bugfixes over the last release. And not upgrading isn't an option. If you don't, new software won't work, or Microsoft will stop supporting its bugs, and your computer won't be able to stay online for longer than 20 minutes at a time. That's like Nissan coming up to me, and going, "Oops. Your car is all broken. But we have a newer, nicer model that works properly, and you can have it for $26,000! Oh, by the way, your old car is now useless junk and will blow up if you drive it anywhere. Sorry 'bout that."

When will people smarten up and stop buying this crap? I can proudly say I've never purchased a copy of Windows in my life. Microsoft hasn't received a dime from me, and never will. I run Linux and Unix on all of my systems. Only one system in my house doesn't have linux on it -- it has MacOS.

Linux my not be the be-all and end-all solution, and it may have bugs too, but when those bugs occur, I can fix them myself, or download a patch that fixes them, and not pay $100 a pop.

Fortunately, however, google seems to be getting into Microsoft's ring by offering online office solutions to use in place of Microsoft Office.

Go back to the shame page...