Could Microsoft have finally shot themselves in the foot? When you are just about the only game in town, you get lazy. When you have no serious competition, you don't feel that you have to hurry correcting errors in your programming, or come out with really new products. Instead, sometimes you just take what you have and try and give it a new face every couple of years, so that you can say it is a new product and then you stop supporting the product that it replaces, thus forcing people to buy the "new and improved" product. Microsoft has long held a virtual monopoly on computer operating systems. Sure there are others out there, like Apple and Linux and other operating systems, but the problem has always been that business were not apt to change their operating, systems because they don't want to have to change all of their software. I can understand this. Who wants to have to redo a huge database for example, or change documents from Microsoft Word format to something else? It is like starting over, but with a huge amount of data. There are also other problems with changing operating systems. There is what is known as the "learning curve". This means that people would have to get used to a new operating system and as with everything else, some people learn much faster than others, thus effecting the productivity of your entire operation.

Things just might be changing soon. Apple's operating system, OS X Leopard, is now capable of running Microsoft Windows software, by using a special software program called, "Boot Camp". Many good things have been said about this system. Truthfully, I have not tried it myself, but the people that I have talked to about it, state that it is far superior to the Windows operating system. Compared to Windows Vista, OS X is like an operating system from a superior race. It is that far ahead. Windows Vista is the biggest failure that Microsoft ever had, as far as operating systems go. Why would this be surprising, it is slower than Windows XP, the operating system it is trying to replace and doesn't run a lot of software and devices that Windows XP does. What was Microsoft thinking when they came out with this OS. Some say it was sheer arrogance, they just figured that they would put out a new one, on top of an already bloated operating system and call it revolutionary and that we would all be sheep and buy it. Well this didn't happen this time. There was a revolution in the business world, business refused to go along, as did some private citizens, including me. I have purchased three desktops since Vista came out and one laptop and I demanded that they all have Windows XP on them. I wasn't about to buy an inferior product that would have handicapped me.

Things are so bad at Microsoft that they have had to not only extend the support for Windows XP, but most big businesses are refusing to buy computers with Vista on them. Now Microsoft is talking about releasing a new operating system in the near future. Why do they think that we will adopt this new os any easier than we did Vista? First of all, for a new operating system to be a viable product, it has to be slim and fast, not bloated with decades of code that was never removed, just built upon. They claimed that they had to keep the old code in there to keep the OS compatible, yet it is not fully compatible, just ask any business that purchased it, only to find out that not only didn't some of their necessary software not work, but things like scanners and printers didn't work either. Microsoft had to have known this was going to happen and yet they put out this below par product anyway. What they are really doing and they don't seem to realize it, is pushing Apple's cause. If Apple decides to release an OS for Windows machines, then Microsoft is going to have their hands full. It certainly won't help them, because people will begin to see how superior the Apple product is.

IBM is now deciding on whether to switch over to Apple Computers from Windows Computers. When you think about it, what have they got to lose? They can still run their Windows programs on that machine and since they are a company that supports all different types of computers, this will give their employees experience with other systems, systems that are superior to Windows. How did this come about? So many of their employees were disgusted with Vista and Microsoft in general, that they kept asking for Apple systems. At first is was a few of the dedicated Apple people, but it soon grew into a tsunami of requests. So many requests were made that IBM soon decided to at least consider the requests by it's employees. Will they switch to Apple Macs? I have no way of knowing, but just the fact that they are considering doing so should send a powerful message to Microsoft, Microsoft is like the Roman Empire when it started to crumble. It didn't happen all at once, it was gradual. That is what is happening to Microsoft. It is being slowly eaten away. Look at what is happening with Microsoft Word, the expensive office suite that is traveling the same path as the OS. There are now alternatives both commercial and free that are as good, if not better. Open Office by Sun, is a free office suite that is compatible with Microsoft Office and as a matter of fact, I prefer it. Can you imagine it is free and just as good for almost all of us? It has just about everything that you would ever want and it loads up Microsoft documents and spread sheets and also saves to those formats. If it is just a word processor you want, there are other free ones available that are also compatible with Word and just as good. Originally I was using a version of Office 2000 by Microsoft and it just kept annoying me with popups stating that I should get a new version That is when I switched to Open Office.

Will this revolution spread? Will the race to get away from Microsoft products speed up? I think that it will and that it is inevitable. Microsoft is like a large clumsy giant. It is slow and plodding, too used to doing what ever it wants without considering the needs of it's customers. Things don't seem to improve, but just stay the same or get worse with many of their products. Many people have installed their updates, only to find that they interfered with their computer and prevented them from being able to either boot up the operating system, or caused errors. This happened to me once when I was set on automatic updates, a condition that Microsoft encourages. They tell you that it is important for you to keep everything in the operating system up to date to prevent what is known as hacking. Keeping up to date is said to correct some weaknesses in their system, because supposedly these updates fix things that could be exploited by others. Staying up to date is a good idea, but not when it causes problems. To see what update problems people are experiencing just type "Microsoft update problem" into the Google search engine and pages of problems will appear. When I typed this in Google, using the quotation marks so that only the exact phrase would be searched for, I got this, Results 1 - 10 of about 23,100 for "windows update problem". That means that for this exact phrase there were 23,100 results. Remember that you could search for this using many different search terms and get other results.

So what is the bottom line here, will Microsoft have to at least share the operating system market with other companies? They would say that they do now, but in truth they have well over ninety percent of it. The last share report I read put Apple at 7.1 percent and that left all the other operating systems added together with less than three percent. Apple is almost ready to step in now and if Microsoft wants to stop them, they may either have to buy them out, or let them compete. It will be very interesting to see where we stand it another two or three years, when Microsoft comes out with another operating system. Will Apple have a competing one? If this happens the public can only win, because competition is good for all. Hey I just built a new computer, and the most expensive part in it was Windows XP. Should your operating system cost more than any device in your computer, even your motherboard? There is also the fact that it can only be used on one computer. Come on guys, give the people a break.