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I totally agree with this. No company is perfect. Microsoft, Novell, Red Hat, Apple have all screwed up at one time or another.

I know a lot of people blame the world's problems on Microsoft, but they are not the antichrist (despite having questionable/downright illegal business practises).

And no I am not a "Microsoft Apologist" as someone is bound to call me now. I run Linux and nothing else. I'm just saying that Microsoft isn't all bad. It would be nice, however, if they didn't have to try and obliderate every company in their path.

Microsoft did help bring a computer into almost every home in America however. (And please don't say "Well some other company would have done it"...that's almost as dumb as saying "Well the US helped a great deal ending WW2, but if they hadn't done it, some other country would have").

Microsoft did help bring a computer into almost every home in America however. (And please don't say "Well some other company would have done it"...that's almost as dumb as saying "Well the US helped a great deal ending WW2, but if they hadn't done it, some other country would have").

Now, if that's such a stupid argument then please tell me what Microsoft did to help bring a computer into almost every home in America? Because seriously, I don't have a clue, so I'm curious.

I was personally under the impression that the internet was what started the huge home computing boom. People started to hear about this thing called internet in the mid/late 90's and decided to get a computer in order to check it out. Now, the thing is that pretty much every x86 computer out there had Windows pre-installed. Did people really go out to buy a computer with Windows or just a computer? There wasn't much of a choice really.
Would the computers have been sold without an operating system if Microsoft wasn't so successful with their marketing?
There were several much more modern, stable and easy to use operating systems out there at the time. I'm pretty sure that the hardware companies would have chosen any of them if Windows hadn't existed.

It's pretty easy for MS to take credit for that part of the history when all they did to "help the people" was to be very agressive with their marketing. They happened to be at the right place at the right time. It was pretty much pure luck.
MS didn't do anything better than the other companies (like IBM, Be, NeXT, Apple, Amiga etc.) except for marketing. But I'm pretty sure that one or two of those companies would have gotten a large piece of the pie if it wasn't for MS. Because if there is a demand for something, someone will provide it.

Microsoft did help bring a computer into almost every home in America however. (And please don't say "Well some other company would have done it"...that's almost as dumb as saying "Well the US helped a great deal ending WW2, but if they hadn't done it, some other country would have").

Oh pulease, don't go around wrapping your naked body in the flag of the USA, with the nice patriotic feel good factor bullshit that went goes with it.

Circa 1980s, there were three big companies going for the end users desktop, Atari, Amiga and Apple - IBM concentrations were on delivering desktops for enterprise customers - they never saw a market for the end user, they saw the computer as a business machine, and sold it as such.

So sunshine, it had NOTHING to do with IBM or Microsoft - the people who 'trail blazed' the market for the end user wasn't Microsoft, and believe me, had Compaq never created a clone, and IBM was never challenged by the DOJ, the world would be a rather different place today - you might actually have some diversity in the marketplace besides one over arching company that dictates the direction of the whole industry - anyone who dares gets in its way, is automtically crushed into oblivion.