Personally I prefer Firefox for all the great add ons it has which Opera doesn't. But there has been a trade war I think with the Germans especially getting very good at making software for Windows better than the American companies are making.

So whether this is part of a trade war, I don't know. It may be that Microsoft has been designing the software in such a way that the companies in Europe and France find infuriating. But the EU has been particularly tough on Microsoft. Whatever is going on, it's all about money - or spycraft. One or the other.

It's not a trade war, it's technical information that's factual, and governments are realizing their own vulnerability. If they fail to tell their citizens, they leave themselves open to intense internal criticism when, not if, the information comes out.

Firefox does indeed have a lot of cool add-ons, and it's certainly better than IE. Opera also has lots of cool add-ons, but it comes out of the box better than Firefox can be configured no matter what add-ons one adds on. It's also more congruent with the HTML and CSS standards, if one cares about such things.

I haven't tried Chrome, but it's gotta be better than IE also.

Microsoft's corporate culture is rated the very worst; worse than defense contractors, when it comes to handling problems people need to know about and be able to handle. The OS itself is designed from the ground up with spite, strong-arming, plausible deniability and litigation in mind. Imagine a system created by backstabbing teams of paranoid middle managers, all of whom are trying to crush their in-house rivals, all of whom hate their customers, their superiors and their underlings. Now stop imagining, because that's exactly how Microsoft works.

Which is why the company has never produced a decent product — that's not on the to-do list.

I did actually buy one product from Microsoft that I liked, the natural keyboard. Which they bought from someone else and had someone else manufacture, then they sold it.

Nowadays I occasionally complain about driver issues with Kubuntu, but my OS hasn't crashed once in the three years I've been running Linux.

It's interesting that they do manage, occasionally, to produce some pretty good hardware. I know people who like the MS mouse a great deal. I didn't know about the keyboard. Perhaps the OEM stuff is safe from the roving gangs of feral managers.

I also like the Ubuntu family of Linux. Although I need to keep the Mac proprietary OS running for specialized software. But for most people it's certainly the best thing going right now. I've been very impressed with it, and by the general friendliness of the user community. The forum exchanges are usually courteous and enthusiastically helpful. That does make a difference.

I have to add that your tech posts are splendid, Chuck. I like the humor and solid advice.

Thanks, Jim!

Yes, it's ironic that the few decent things they make are hardware given the founding idea, never to make hardware but to be independent of it.

Indeed, the community-support aspect is one of the best recommendations for the Ubuntu family. I generally get answers to questions I post within fifteen minutes to an hour, and occasionally it takes overnight because everyone's signed off. But that's better than you'd get from Microsoft if you paid them.