Why do Microsoft products suck?

Scoble wants to know why Microsoft software sucks. While it's great to see somebody at Microsoft finally asking this question, you'll forgive me if I'm a little skeptical of seeing any improvement. That said, here's why I avoid Microsoft products:

  1. They're not open source. Other people have explained why this is a bad thing much better than I can so I'll leave you to do your own research if you think that your mind can be changed on this issue.
  2. MS continues to design and implement proprietary file formats and protocols rather than open ones. This makes it far harder to interoperate with MS products and share your data with users of other operating systems.
  3. MS has embraced Digital Rights Management technology. Microsoft is intentionally crippling their software and then asking us why we think it sucks.
  4. Ok, enough about philosophy, here's my only gripe about Microsoft software quality: it breaks, and when I fix it I don't know how I did it. The problem solving process with MS software usually goes something like this: reinstall the drivers, reinstall the software, do a lot of rebooting and replugging of hardware. Eventually, it starts working, at least until it breaks again. In Linux, things don't just stop working and I've never fixed anything without knowing what I did. This is because the system is open, Microsoft is a closed book and there's no possibilty of ever gaining a deeper knowledge of it.

There's my two cents, if you have gripes with MS you can put them in Scoble's comments or post them on your own blog.