Windows 7 raises complaints from rivals

Hi all
You only become a monopoly in 3 cases

1) Your product is either the best (or the most convenient including price, availability, functionality)

2) You can FORCE other products out of business by fair means (better product) or foul (Mafia etc etc)

3) Governments (by definition a "Monopoly" between election times) give your company an exclusive contract which essentially leads to condition 2.

Now whilst other products are out there such as various flavours of Linux NOBODY can convince me that as far as "The ordinary" user is concerned there is ANY other product that has fulfilled condition 1) as good as Windows.

It might not be as technically advanced as some -- such as the old IBM OS/2 at the start of the whole PC revolution 30 odd years ago and there were some real dogs on the way (Windows NT, Windows Me were 2 in particular) but Microsoft achieved what it set out to do when it was just a fledgling business and a certain Mr Gates said -- I want to put "Windows" on every personal computer.

True there are some great Linux products or even some stuff from apple that you don't have to be a Mac Fanboy to appreciate but in spite of some drawbacks and quirks Windows still fits the bill for over 90% of users out there - and these days they DO have a much wider choice than ever. However it's still often a pain to install and get stuff working on a Non Windows OS.

A typical user can often just buy a computer with Windows already installed, plug in a piece of hardware and it works -- not always of course but in the VAST majority of cases it DOES.

No other OS can connect so many different pieces of hardware -- a real achiement considering Windows can be used for such diverse tasks as controlling the drilling rate in oil / gas rigs, firing Nuclear weapons (hopefully with extra security) to boring things like filing tax returns.

The USA whilst saying it is "The Land of Free Enterprise" actually has some of the toughest "Anti Trust" legislation in the world but even the B/S lawyers had to abandon the IBM suits against MS.

There's always some "wheeling and dealing" in business -- that's the nature of it -- you've got to work not necessarily harder but definitely smarter. It's not a game of Cricket and people don't follow "Queensberry rules" .

So long as there is a reasonable framework in place for proper "Corporate Governance" and reasonable transparency in the placing of Large contracts then "Let the best man win".

If you have a decent product there'll always be a market for it. And whilst the Open Source model is a great idea and can work really well such as products from SUN (JAVA, OPEN OFFICE etc) why SHOULD you be forced to open up your products to potential competitors -- it's up to them to displace yours if they are that much better.

If I were MS I'd tell the EU to "Go and make a sexual move with a Duck" and not supply Windows from within the EU at all (Glad Iceland is not an EU member currently) . People could get it from the Net.

I don't know how many employees MS has in Europe but I'm sure it has around 10,000 directly with maybe another 15,000 jobs indirectly dependent on it. Removing this size workforce at the moment would really cause concern.

These EU politicians in the comission aren't actually elected by anybody anyway so let them "play in their stupid courts".

There's a whole difference in passing a kangaroo court judgement and actually enforcing it -- what are they going to do -- arrest 10,000 MS employees or send the bailiff's in. I'm sure security would soon march "These ANIMALS" off the premises PDQ. I'm also sure MS could move its money around to "Off shore" Banks to prevent seizure of assets in any case.


Cheers
jimbo