It is hard to make a simil with addiction without having other connotations. Microsoft is a platform made on purpose to be incompatible with anything else and actively trying to keep you hooked and paying. That is the point, not death.
Because it is not evil. Microsoft offers quality software for a good price, and the total cost of ownership is not that high.
What I like about Microsoft is, that even if it's a mammoth and are not able to innovate as quickly as Google for example, they are still able to improve their software and iterate towards a useful set of products.
I beg to differ, their software is not quality and not a good price in the long run.
* Microsoft products are a nightmare to maintain, just one thing to show is the amount of reboots
required for most updates, including just applications or services.
* IE is a nightmare not just for users but for web developers, they destroy everybody else's
standardization attempts.
* IIS is another standards and performance nightmare, and they killed all other commercial competitors
with a dirty war of licensing and hard limiting their software (Workstation vs. server) by undocumented
configuration.
* Outlook/Exchange are incompatible with almost anything out there. [Edit: and some of their worse in performance!]
* Microsoft Office is not just incompatible, but Microsoft actively sabotages any attempt by third
parties to make a standard (last month half of the Office Open XML board quit in protest.) They did
similar strategies on the undocumented OS services dirty war back in the 90s.
* SQL server is also hard to move out of and is horrible in performance for similar tests compared to
open source solutions (Oracle being even slower doesn't prove it is good.)
* Their security record is one of the worst in the industry for the big players, several famous
researchers stopped informing them altogether. (There are a few exceptions here and there, like DNS
earlier this year.)
* They push draconian DRM systems and the darker side of Trusted Computing, where you completely lose
control of your own hardware and a big brother organization will be able to limit and
potentially spy on you without your authorization or even your knowledge.
And on the other side, their technology works like nothing else.
Windows hosts AD which talks to IIS and Exchange attributes are in AD and your file permissions are linked to AD user accounts and you can query it with LDAP which means your RADIUS devices can talk to it and your Certificate Server links with your domain, and your workstations access shared folders on the network which mirror files over WAN links using DFS which is AD integrated also, as is DNS which links with DHCP, machines are locked down by group policies which apply even on laptops, Exchange supports ActiveSync to Windows Mobile which has SQL Server Compact which can sync to SQL Server Express for your desktop and SQL Server for your main server which is monitored by MOM and running on HyperV and Virtual Server, and SQL Server Enterprise for your cluster, which has AD integrated permissions and is running on Windows Datacenter edition hosting a site on ASP.Net which serves to desktops using ClickOnce which builds into IE which is rolled out by WSUS which sits on Windows Internal Database which reports using SQL Server Reporting Services which is published in your Sharepoint site which handles your Excel spreadsheets with Excel Calculation Services along with your documentation which is all searchable through Search Server Express which is SQL Server backed and understands Windows file and website permissions, as do documents in Office when you use Office DRM to say who can change them and track versions and you can see if people are online when typing their names as they turn into smart tags which link with Office Live Communicator so you can IM people and SIP call them and email them which will be tracked in CRM using the plugin to Outlook which you're accessing as a published app from a terminal server connected by a windows integrated VPN through an AD integrated ISA server ... and the whole glorious lot is variously scriptable with COM, WMI, vbscript, VB for Applications, and plugins developed with Microsoft Visual Studio.Net and person-decades of documentation.
One Microsoft Way is right enough. No other software ecosystem is anything like the same scale or as usefully well integrated, from a business POV.
Linux on the desktop is almost laughable in how far from the Microsoft business reality it is. Every little annoyance, horrible error message or instability is worth putting up with because of the integration of ... everything.
And it's so cheap, too. All it costs is your company's soul in proprietary data format hell. Forever. But look on the bright side - few people even realise their company has a data soul, and it's not like there's any choice.
