Microsoft is the company everyone loves to hate and I am not an exception. But I think we have gone a bit too far in our prejudice. Surely there are looser products by Microsoft such as Internet Explorer which do not care anything about users and prevent the market from taking a good direction. But on the other hand Microsoft also has built products which have changed our lives and most of us really like to use but somehow we don't admit.
I gave some thoughts to it and came up with a list of Microsoft products I really like:
Windows Mobile
I love this mobile operating system! I've owned two Windows Mobile based devices (HTC TyTN II & P3300) and never had a slightest of regret. The version of 6.1 just works great! It is smooth, handles multitasking very well, mobile Office is great and there are so many useful third party applications available. The only thing I don't like about Windows Mobile is the bundled Pocket IE. But you can always install Opera Mini or Opera Mobile.
I find Windows Mobile way better than iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Symbian platforms.
Microsoft Office
I've used a lot of Office suites out there (OpenOffice etc) but nothing comes closer to Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook. They've worked hard on improving Office to keep their users happy and if you analyze the complexity of these products, you'd realize that they've done a good job. Also, they've been relatively quite fair in this competition :)
Windows XP
Yes! Thats true. Though Windows XP is not something that I am a die hard fan but I find it certainly better than having any other OS on my desktop, especially Linux. I want something that is OK out-of-the box, not something which I have to tweak hard to make really cool. Windows XP serves this purpose really well. However I must congratulate Microsoft for taking a step backwards and coming up with Vista.
For the Mac fans out there: I like my computer running without the cover and hard-disk outside the casing. I would love to make MacOS X my primary OS on my cheap hardware but that won't be possible till Mac sticks with its awesome philosophy.