On Jan 22, 2004, at 9:18 AM, Craig White wrote:

> Say what? criticism for Microsoft bashing from me?
>
> I think I'm fairly consistent about this - I don't bash Microsoft or
> Apple - and I see very little difference between them except that
> Microsoft has the market share and Apple doesn't.

I just don't agree that Windows XP has attained stability, reliability 
and security comparable to either Mac or Linux. In the last two days I 
have dealt with two Windows installations that have been subjected to 
mysterious slowdowns and crashing. One of these was on one machine out 
of an office of several identical machines that had never been 
connected outside the office. I'll be the first to admit that I haven't 
been rigorous about data collection and that Win 2K was a great 
improvement over everything that came before but Windows still isn't 
there yet as far as functionality goes.

Craig said a lot more in his post that I agree with completely but I 
want to add a bit of spin. Some commentators here have expressed the 
notion that it's a shame that business people don't react more strongly 
to MS's conviction for antitrust violations. I obviously can't post 
details but a number of my clients have been harassed by regulatory 
agencies for what were at worst unintentional breaches of some obscure 
rule. The result was the had to spend a lot of time and pay a lot of 
money to lawyers to make the problem go away. They note that their 
competitors  who are more politically connected have somehow avoided 
these hassles.

Now Microsoft notoriously avoided politics altogether before the 
antitrust suit and became a big contributor to both parties during the 
trial. I think many business people think MS was really prosecuted for 
being too stingy with campaign contributions and that when they 
demonstrated that they had learned their lesson further sanctions were 
unwarranted. I wish there were some clear facts to refute this theory.