Your comment reads like a troll, but you have some good points.

"what made them buy it before it was 'what everyone uses'?"

The quick answer is that the IBM PC became popular and brought MS-DOS with it. Its popularity of the IBM PC in general was heavily based on IBM's brand and software compatibility of business applications. When other companies wanted to get into the PC market, they found it hard to sell hardware that didn't have well known software written for it (which of course is because the hardware wasn't popular, leading to a natural monopoly for the IBM PC).

Because of the clone market and the deal Microsoft had signed with IBM, the growth of the clone market meant the growth of MS-DOS, and eventually the transfer of monopoly power from IBM to Microsoft. From MS-DOS 1.0, Microsoft has always been a "Me-too" player, adding only the features necessary to prevent people from switching platforms. This trends towards a culture of letting others do the innovating.

"Do you ask yourself things like 'why do we have Automobiles when a Horse and Buggy is good enough'?"

Well, thats a good question, but I'll answer it with another one - how much does the Horse and Buggy cost? Because, if I am 10 times more productive with the car, and the car cost me less than that, yes, I should have a car. So yes, Windows XP is much better than MS-DOS 1.0. I would be more productive with XP, and it costs less than the productivity gain. When Vista came out, and it costs more than XP, and there is no "upgrade" discount, the question was very different. Businesses did not upgrade (if they weren't forced) to Vista because they didn't get their money back. Now Windows 7 is due, and we'll ask ourselves once again whether its worth the additional money.

"And I'm fascinated by people like yourself who are so completely out of touch with reality that you actually believe your own bullshit."

I think that everyone should... your much better off believing your own bullshit than someone else's. Still, I think that you might not understand the world as well as you think you do.

"The status quo is kept alive because Microsoft has the best tools for business and enterprise."

Ah, and now you hit the nail perfectly. Microsoft is alive because they have the best system for people in power to control those that they employ. Its smart catering to the basics of human nature, and control is one of them. Wouldn't we all be happier if we could control the lives of others?

The deep question is who is this better for, and who makes the decisions. I believe that Personal Computing should be, err... personal. The success of software should be derived from how much more personally efficient it makes each of us. This means that I value features like ease of use (more learning means less efficiency for non-repetitive tasks), low cost (less effort I have to expend to get the gain), organization and consistency (the opposite of which is needless stress to me), and stability (downtime is not productive, nor are interruptions).

My original comment on this submission comes from my inherit distaste for mouthpieces who defend companies against their own consumers. If Jason says that he dislikes the organization of Windows 7, then to an extent, the organization of Windows 7 is wrong. If the OS has to be customized to be useful, then it is wrong (every new Windows box I have to use gets the classic theme, hidden files visible, and a list of things that grows the more I have to use it.) When Microsoft runs an ad campaign instead of fixing Vista bugs, they have failed. Please, everyone, stop defending their failures. Defend what is worth defending and you'll feel better about yourself.

In my opinion, the goal of this article is for Ed to show that he is a better consumer than Jason, and in the end tells me that Microsoft has failed again. Amusingly, the first comment in the article's page is "I am 100pct with Jason.". The second is "Loving Windows XP". What if Windows 7 is a step backwards from XP? Have we forgotten Windows ME? How does your horse and buggy metaphor apply then?

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