tanstaafl,

Contrary to popular opinion, Microsoft has not been the innovators or even leaders of the last 20 years. The leaders in marketshare perhaps, but that's about it.

You mention having shared printer drivers. The Macintosh had this feature for many years prior to any Microsoft product.

What about a windowing system? Microsoft was dead last there. Macintosh had a usable window system years before MS ever did. So did nearly every desktop operating system: Amiga, RISC OS, Atari ST, NeXT, X-Windows, etc. During the late 80's nearly every desktop system used windows, except for Microsoft's users-- they all were still stuck using DOS.

Pre-emptive Multitasking? With the notable exception of the Mac, Microsoft was again nearly dead last to introduce this feature to their user base. The Amiga offered this in 1985, 10 years before Microsoft would offer this to their general user base!

What about the web? Again, Microsoft was last again. I recall seeing an interview with Gates around 94 where he claimed the Internet was "insignificant" and "only useful for academa" and how it will "never amount to someting useful for the average home user". And we all know how Microsoft was one the last companies to have a web strategy or even acknowledge the importance of it-- they waited until '95 to address this issue!

That's not leadership, and it's nothing to be proud of. The only thing they have to be proud of is making lots of money-- not bettering computing for all mankind.