When will Microsoft ever get its act together?

In IIT, where I first came across computers and the Internet, I used mostly Linux and other Unix based operating systems. They were difficult to grasp the first time around, but once you got the basics figured out, they were quite easy to configure, customize and use. They were very very robust. At that time, I did not understand why most people were so anti Windows and MS Office. I used MS based systems mostly to watch movies since for some reason Linux did not have a good viewer (at least in the late 90s).

Today, after having used Microsoft based computers for no less than 9 years, I understand what I could not a decade ago. My computer is a state-of-the-art HP EliteBook. I have the most expensive hardware on this system. My operating system is the top-of-the-line Windows XP Professional. I don't understand why my computer operating system still keeps hanging ever so often. Every time this happens, the only thing I can do is to reboot. Each reboot takes around 10 - 15 minutes of my time. At 1am, when one is fighting a deadline, these 15 minutes are worth their weight in gold.

Another example - I used Lotus Notes for email during my time at McKinsey. Now, having used MS Outlook for the last 3.5 years, I must confess that it is the most heavy, most cumbersome and most buggy piece of software that I have encountered. It causes my computer to underperform so significantly, that I often shut it down when I'm working on critical stuff.

I have stopped using Internet Explorer altogether - Google Chrome is so much lighter, responsive and intuitive - it has become my default browser.

Microsoft has a monopoly position in these products - the least they can do is to make them REALLY REALLY good. However, they cannot seem to get it. They have had similar experiences with web-based email (Hotmail, which is so much inferior to GMail), smartphones (their OS is nowhere even close to Google's android or Apple's iOS) or even search (Bing could not dent Google's market share). These guys are in the best place to invest vast resources and cream the competition. But they don't seem to get it!

What is up with Microsoft???