>>   One shouldn't, though, forget the marketing tactics Microsoft used,
>>   and is still using, to enforce their products on people.
> 
> Oh, no, absolutely - there are many things they did once customers got 
> into the cycle to lock people in (something else they've done well is to 
> find the right price point so people will tolerate less than perfect 
> software; they may not love it, but they don't hate it enough to spend 
> the money to switch).

Last time I checked, if you want an office suite, you can buy MS Office 
or...

...uh, yeah, exactly. It's not that MS Office is good enough that nobody 
will pay to switch. It's that there's nothing to switch *to*. Like I 
say, MS carefully arranges it so that users have no alternatives. That 
way they don't have to waste money on, say, making a product that people 
want to use.

(Although there is hope. Give it another 5 years or so, maybe OpenOffice 
will become good...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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