I have never had any real problems with Windows. I'm a fairly heavy user
compared to Joe Average, and have, over the years, had many varied and
exotic applications running on Windows machines with OS's from Win 3.1
right up to Win 7. I know that it's not a very fashionable or approved
position
to declare, but I actually quite like the Windows concept on the whole,
and
would never indulge in Gates-bashing. I actually think that Windows has,
over the years, done more to expand the world of personal computing, and
to 'standardise' application writing, than any other OS or platform.

I've never had major problems with Windows, either -- and a late friend of
mine told me how the Macintosh OS simply fell apart on his machine and
required re-installation. * But...

Microsoft has never done enough to assure that third-party Windows
applications are reliable and compatible. Worse, Microsoft is in the process
of destroying its own applications, by letting the programmers design
them -- a very, very, very bad idea. (I'd heard this rumor for some time,
and it was confirmed in a magazine article about Ray Ozzie, whom Microsoft
hired a few years ago to fix things up. Steve Ballmer has apparently blocked
most of his attempts to "do things right".)

Microsoft's fundamental problem is that it has never understood that the
interaction between the user and the operating system (or applications) is
/the/ most-important thing.

I have no intention of ever switching to the Macintosh, if only because
Apple is even worse than Microsoft -- Apple lies through its teeth.

* In truth, this happened to me six years ago. Windows would run, but
behaved very strangely. I had to re-install Windows and the applications. I
don't know what caused this. Since then, I've had no problems.