Make sure to get Java Edition. The other one is just an ad-riddden slopfest where they also ban you if you say swear words.
I switched to Mac with the Intel change around...2006 maybe? Converted my entire family.
I personally switched to various flavors of linux around 2016-2017 because I wanted more hardware options.
Eventually, my son got into gaming and eventually we let him get an Alienware laptop maybe 2-3 years ago. Then my wife had to get one for work this year. It's like nothing has improved in 20 years.
Back in the early 1990s you'd get Microsoft Office from the store, as a box containing 10 floppy disks. And they had to put a lot of effort into testing it, because patching was impossible. And of course it was fully offline. Perpetually licensed, with paid upgrades.
The problems were instead things like "this notionally multi-user OS is just a single-user OS with a decorative login screen" and "any application can crash the entire OS" and "spreadsheets auto-run macro viruses" and things like that.
I think they completely let it go when they laid off the testers and let users pay $$ to be testers, starting from 2010s perhaps. Maybe earlier.
On the business side, with M365, they use lock-in tactics and extremely aggressive bundle pricing. The only competitor is Google Workspace, and it's missing features you get bundled with something like an E5 license. So your choice becomes: just pay Microsoft $60/user/month and get Identity, Office, Intranet, MDM, EDR, DLP, ZTNA, the works. Or, buy Google Workspace and then also buy Slack, Okta, JamF (or Jumpcloud or similar), some ZTNA product, etc. and you are now at double or more the price of an E5 license.
On the consumer side with Windows, they secured their monopoly via internet explorer, and predatory OEM contracts to prevent machines being sold with anything else. Now Windows is just an ad-delivery network disguised as an OS. People don't leave Windows because its still, through those shady backroom deals, the default OS on every off the shelf PC, and because of existing software.
Microsoft has zero incentive to build a good product now, they already won. People use it because they have to not because they want to.
I don't think I've used a MS product in at least a decade. At least that I was aware of.
Edit: did some research and I have used LinkedIn. Other than that, nothing.
This used to be the case when Apple was in dire straits and MS abused their monopoly position to gain 95% of browsers market share. Grim days.
But those days are thankfully long done and there are plenty of people who are completely Microsoft-free.
The one thing people are using one way or another is Linux, because it's now in just about everything. Even those in the Apple ecosystem, with an iPhone and Mac computers, very probably have a Linux router and Linux TV at home.
The number of devices in the world running one version of Linux or another outnumber Windows devices by something like 10 to 1. Maybe more.
Microsoft is a despicable company producing turds since forever. I hate them and the crap they produce with a passion since the DOS days.
As the saying goes: the day Microsoft shall produce something that doesn't suck is the day they'll start selling vacuum cleaners.
Also MS stuff has always been slop. Hate their business practices too. But without Linux we'd be choosing between MS, Apple and Oracle Solaris or something...
Last time I remember them doing something similar was on the last days of XP / earlier Vista time. But it wasn't so bad at the time.
(Not that I would know, I don't touch Microsoft's shit with a 10-foot-pole)
Windows NT (including Windows 2000) was considered to be a workstation OS by Microsoft. From Windows XP on, the NT-based Windows operating systems (except for the server ones) were targeted to consumers.
I don’t see that as support for the claim that Microsoft’s products were half-baked in the 80s and 90s.
If Linux had sufficient market penetration in small business, I bet you could run a successful business fixing problems with Linux products, even today.
(It may be a bit of a stretch but you could even argue Amazon is making serious money supporting big companies with their Linux problems)
They're weird to this unix-head, but generally not as buggy as in MacOS.
But I don't think it contradicts your point. This is just a rare exception to the true general rule.
Later they abandoned consumerware after losing the mobile space but that's a different story. Microsoft isn't really a consumer software company any more so there's no point judging it on that basis.