Microsoft is in business PARTLY because of Office and Windows sellings so much and delivering so much profit, but also because of their smart aquisitions (call it monopolization if you wish) and because of how good they are at conducting business in general. Really--think about it:
Office has not had a major change since Microsoft Office 97, and Windows XP is essentially a tailored version of Windows 95. Windows has not received a radical change in about a decade. 98 was the same as 95, Me was just terribe, 2000 offered a lot of new security updates but did not look much different and did not have many new features from 98, and XP, as we have already stated, is pretty much the same thing as 2000.
Even better: all their software is based on DOS, which is ancient, and, more importantly, which was stolen (err...bought for a minimal fee) from IBM(?) in the '80s.
So there you have it. Microsoft has not changed their software in a decade. Sure, they have offered a lot of new programs but I doubt those will be updated until 2010.
Don't you think it is quite a big accomplishment for Microsoft to become and maintain their status as the world's largest company?
Just another note for all the Microsoft haters reading this: Macs sucked until OS X came out--both in hardware and software. OS 9 was crap. OS 8 was crap. It was all crap until OS X.
In 1995(4?), Windows 95 was an incredible piece of software, and none of you can or should deny that. It was way ahead of it's time, and the Mac operating system of the time was garbage. So let's face it: Microsoft hasn't always been bad, and Longhorn will probably change things around as Windows 95 did. Just because the average Longhorn computer will have a 3 GHz processor does not mean it will be bad. So don't give Microsoft such a pain in the ass. Maybe they too will turn around and start making great products, just how Apple did quite recently.
