You must have noticed how people like banging on about how crap Microsoft are?

You have? It’s not just me then.  And have you noticed it’s usually by people trying to brag about much more they know about IT than you do?

‘You still using Microsoft?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘You should be using Linux and it’s free’

‘Why? XP gives me everything I want, and more, it’s free with the PC, it hasn’t crashed on me, plug and play is fab, and allows me to do stuff for work’

‘Linux is the way of the future, I am much more enlightened than you are’

‘I'm sorry, but I've been using Microsoft products for years and, generally, they're very good - especially the latest stuff.’

Etc. etc. etc.

(and I’m only adding full stops after the etc’s above as Microsoft is now teaching me far more about English grammar and spellings then my school teachers ever did!)

Maybe some people like to be different, but me? I’m cool with Microsoft.  I go back to the days of MS Dos, and then Windows 286, then the great Windows 3.0 and the first versions of Word and Excel – what an improvement they were on the DOS based Wordstar and Supercalc.  Common printer drivers, common menus, brilliant.  (by the way DOS stands for Disk Operating System, long before Denial of Service attacks were known about – DOS is what we used before Windows came along)

As for Linux, RedHat, Fedora, SuSE, Mandrake, FreeBSB – they all sound like names of race horses or something, not something I would trust on my PC!

OK so there have been some cock ups along the way, and Microsoft have got a bit big headed along the way – like what was Windows ME all about? But now with Win XP and Office 2003 it’s just about right.  Copy and paste between applications is a treat, Visual Basic macros, and a great OCR package hidden away for free.  Home networking is a pushover, and Plug’n’Play (PnP) is amazing.  The support community is great if you look for it, there are loads of great help, FAQ and technical support pages out there if you ever get stuck.

The last thing my friend says…

‘take care about viruses’

‘err well I don’t trust Microsoft that much! – I use free AntiVirus software for that’