learning to (re) something microsoft

I like linux. I quite like Apple, and like many people in IT I don't really like Microsoft for a whole host of reasons revolving around licensing agreements, vista, file format creep, and bloated applications - and my personal gripe - they never really got server based computing.

And as a reslut when professionally and personally I could avoid using Microsoft products I didn't. In fact I found there were a whole lot of things I could do just as effectively without Microsoft products as with them.

But let's be rational here - there are a whole lot of things Microsoft do as well as anyone else and I've started sneaking out of my operating systems ending in X ghetto to find:

1. Windows 7 - it's actually good, and like any good operating system inoffensive - and it doesn't crash or leak memory to any great extent
2. Windows live writer - quite a nice little (free) offline blogging tool that plays nicely with blogger and wordpress
3. Bing - it's quite good at finding obscure things
4. Skydrive - quietly amazingly useful
5. Hotmail - well the ads are a little too intrusive, but again it's a nice reliable alternate mail service to the big G

and so while I still like the Apple/Google/Linux ecology I'm starting to like Microsoft again - which is kind of odd ...