Let's just look at what Microsoft offers:

Pay outrageous amounts of money for a piece of software, and you get:
Little documentation.
Little to no useful technical support.
Endless streams of patches and service packs, few of which actually solve problems.
Nothing that is industry standard.

Then they come out with a new version, where they've done little more than pretty it up, and you have to pay for that. If you don't, your machine is obsolete, and won't work with any of the new software.

People started using it because it came with their computer.
It comes with computers because Microsoft offers incentives to manufacturers to sell it with the machine, and then traps them into the deal.

Microsoft is better at selling software than writing code.


They have ahold of the market for desktop machines because of their business practices. When you step up into the world of IT, where people need shit to work, Microsoft becomes a minor player to companies like Redhat and Sun. In some cases, the Windows solution is cheaper, but the Unix/Linux solution has better support, is more developed and will show massive increases in stability and functionality.

...

So I guess to be more accurate: If you're using Windows, you're Microsoft's bitch.