A question regarding software/applications

I decided very spontaneously that today (right now, in fact) I would reinstall my OS. In other words, a good ole spring cleaning for my PC. As I write this I am making some back-ups of family photos and the like and also my software that I need. This got me thinking, for average users the Windows OS really comes packed with everything a person could need. Browser, media player, AV, etc and yet I specifically turn to other software for certain uses. For eg: instead of Media Player I use Clementine for music and VLC for video. I use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, Thunderbird instead of Windows Mail or Outlook, LibreOffice instead of MS Office. On the other hand I am very happy with MSE, notepad, Snipping Tool, Solitaire...

This got me wondering, how many other Windows users out think that 3rd party apps/software are often superior to native Windows ones? Surely I'm not the only person who thinks that IE is only good for downloading FF...

bigseb said:

... how many other Windows users out think that 3rd party apps/software are often superior to native Windows ones? ...

me!

Personally, I only use IE, (now IE 10) and find it very capable.

Microsoft has provided many applications that have just basic capabilities.

When they venture into providing more, they get sued. So, yes there are some better third party programs available, some free some not.

Just my opinion.

It depends what program you are referring to, Office is better than LibreOffice, but LibreOffice is free and provides all the capabilities which I need. IE11 is even a greater improvement over IE10; I just prefer the Firefox UI, and only switched from Opera to Firefox due to all the major changes they made in Opera 15.

Windows does provide some really useful troubleshooting tools on TechNet and MSDN.

For instance, the Visual Studio IDE is much better than others which I have used.