To be frank, and I am not a lefty....
Microsoft should be partly nationalized. The fact that we have to keep paying for this service and visibly have no say in what it does to our computers is typical of silicon valley authoritarianism.... I wish we could charge them for the amount of time we have to spend getting out of their clutches...
Alas, I never had time to switch to Linux, and for years I used a very efficient database to translate (Wordfast) but the company making it never did a Linux version... I have the will to learn a new system, but don't have the time... I have a great story though about WIN 98... I spent half a day trying to get my ISDN system to work (I had to send a job into a company) ... I called a friend who was an engineer and built computers he said: WIN can't handle more than 2 USB plugins, but MS doesn't tell you that. He pointed out that Linux could... I called MS and asked if they could help, knowing the solution.... The guy on the line rattled off his usual spiel: You have to reinstall your system (I had done that), then do this, do that, and of course, the usual defense: "It's the other guy's fault"... I then said: What about the hot-pluggable issue and the fact that we can't plug in more than two USBs at the same time.... He said: Oh, yes... that's true, no system can..."--- When I said "Linux can!" He hung up on me.