[blibble]

I'd guess it's because a lot of techies remember how 10 years ago MS exploited their monopoly to force their products onto the entire world?

fortunately those days are over and they've become mostly irrelevant, but everyone knows that given half a chance they'd do it again...

[zanny]

> fortunately those days are over and they've become mostly irrelevant, but everyone knows that given half a chance they'd do it again...

Everyone I know for the most part types their documents in Microsoft Word on Windows computers. Sure, they got smartphones and tablets for the media consumption and facebook, but they don't even know an alternative "big boy" OS exists. They think Windows == computers. Which I think means MS is anything but irrelevant (no matter how hard I try to stuff opensuse down everyones throat).

[icefox]

Maybe ten years ago I would have said that, but these days it seems they are typing their "documents" into an email composer or a website form (be it a frontend for blogger, wiki, wordpress, etc).

[dsuth]

You mustn't work in an office environment then. The only significant break from MS products I've seen has been Lotus Notes... which was significantly worse than Exchange.

MS Office is the defacto file format for office work, and MS Office on non-Windows platforms (ie. Mac) is so bad as to appear intentionally crippled.

[icefox]

I work for an decent sized international company that not only has a presence on the web it also has factories and all of the complexities that go with that. I would indeed count where I work as an "office environment", I even have the cube, office badge and mailbox to prove it :)

[vowelless]

I was a kid back then so I don't know the details of the story. Can you give me a primer?

[jongalloway2]

s/10/20

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft#Hist...

[blibble]

don't forget this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Microsoft_compet...

[us0r]

don't forget to link to Google, Apple and EVERY other Fortune 500 company doing the same shit, different pile.

[pjmlp]

They won't because this is HN and only Microsoft is bad.

[tlarkworthy]

also don't forget the gazillions of viruses in that era. Business networks paralysed by out of control worms on the internet. Good times.