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Microsoft and The Bombay Club

Gopi thinks I am a Microsoft basher. Vaibhav thinks I am a fan of theirs. The reason I am giving both extremes reasons to be happy is that I am none!

Yes I use Windows Vista on my laptop and my resolve of installing Solaris Desktop dwindled since I speeded up booting by turning User Account Control off (from about 5 minutes to about 5 seconds!) and I wrote reviews of several Microsoft offerrings but am I a fan of Microsoft?

I have written about how irritating and stupid Microsoft products can be at times and how Third Party software works better on their OS as compared to their own and often I have complained about their software not being supported on other OSs but does that prove me a Microsoft basher?

I think I am somewhere in the middle ground. I use Microsoft's products and appreciate them for all their goodness. They are popular and by hook or by crook MS has garnered maximum users. These software may not be best available but they do work pretty well for most of the users. But most doesn't mean ALL.

In response to my arguement that why Microsoft produces software that will run only on Windows OSs, Gopi says this is their business strategy. Most of their users are Windows users and why to bother about running these applications on a Mac or Red Hat. I have to agree.

This reminds me of the Bombay Club. Bombay Club was a group of Indian industrialists who wanted protective measures to save Indian industries from foreign competition. They opposed opening of the economy. Microsoft is behaving in same manner. By not opting to compete openly on foreign-turf they are being protective. I believe that Microsoft is a good company with good developers who can write software that will be good enough for even non-Windows platform. MS wants to win in Web and they have done pretty good, but I am surprised by their reluctance to play the game by the rules in desktop market even when they are developing free software. The free software and frameworks are still only on Windows. Though you could hack OS to install MS software but why should anyone bother to toil so much for software which is not actually good enough as free software which is easy to obtain and easy to install!

We have seen that opening of Indian economy lead to an Indian surge. Now question is will Microsoft ever take courage to open its economy?


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Neha said…
Hmmm...nice thought...but MS is more concerned about their profit and position in the market than 'playing fair' or 'playing by the rules' and I guess its justified...
2:07 PM
Waterfox said…
And who says that by playing by the rules you don't profit.
Also by saying 'Play by the rules' I meant that they should follow the tactics of the market!
9:37 PM
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