Of what ex-Microsoft technology manager Jeff Reifman laments about applications crashes, failed expectations and the steady stream of inconsistancies and disappointments, if even half of what he says is true, I truly do feel sorry for all those of you who've been lured into the trap of it ...

I remember eagerly looking forward to Outlook 2003, only to be disappointed by how complex, buggy, and unimproved it was. “There’s kind of an angst,” says Andrews, the Seattle Times columnist and author. “Microsoft ought to matter to us. There ought to be more of an intellectual and emotional connection. There just isn’t.”

True, I walked away from Microsoft products in 1995, or at least started my walk; it took another 3 years to complete the detoxification and when '98 proved no real perk above the '95, away went that pesky second partition. I gave it lots of second-chances too, but every time I tried to do any real work -- whup there goes another afternoon spent.

So do I gather from Jeff's memoires here that in the ensuing 6 years things have only gone from bad to worse?

But in the first five minutes on my new Mac, I was surfing the Internet, sending e-mail, and ripping a CD. OS X has been a breath of badly needed fresh air ...

[ Source: Microsoft's Sacred Cash Cow ]