Baruch_Menachem - 3:55 pm on Jun 13, 2009 (gmt 0)

I would think with the success of Firefox and Chrome that the folks in Redmond would realize they have a problem. It really is uncharacteristic of people to go out of their way to get another piece of software like that.

I don't believe they have ever charged for IE, it has always come bundled, hasn't it? I personally always went out of my way to use other browsers when available. I think the only reason I dropped Netscape was because I got safari instead, and I used DejaNews rather than Netscape for news browsing.

As the population of folks in charge of IT budgets gets older, and a bit wiser to the ways of OSs, they might look at how much they have to pay to constantly monitor and patch Microsoft stuff. Linux is free, and they have some really good aps. Would be fun if some major bank decided "Screw this, we haven't got the time or personnel to continually deal with Microsoft's QC issues."

It really is odd that folks think there is a monopoly when there is better stuff out for free, and people make a huge effort to pay extra for lower quality.