How was I not making sense?

Oh yeah, that's one of the worst choices possible. It annoys the hell out of me when I go on someone else's computer and the extensions are hidden. Why would Microsoft make that the default!? Especially when, as you pointed out, it's a massive security problem. All you have to do is give your horrible program a common icon used for documents and it looks harmless.

It's part of their design philosophy to not scare away timid newbs, but it ultimately leads to insecurity and other major headaches.They also have a nasty habit of moving features around without any particular reason. I can be away from my FreeBSD install for years and come back to find nearly everything the way it was, except better, than when I left. There'll be changes, but those changes will be because they needed to change and generally there'll be considerable thought as to whether or not it's really needed before they get implemented.

When it comes down to it the main reason I hate Windows is the wasted potential. Windows could have been great with a company the size of MS behind it and yet it's regularly embarrassed by most of the other OSes. As it is Windows is basically the world's most successful also ran. It's improved to the point of being solidily mediocre and usable and with Windows 8 they're going to yet again radically redesign the entire OS without really thinking about why.

As much as I dislike Gates, he at least had vision and MS seemed to be a lot more interested in finding some sort of wow for the new release, which has been sorely lacking since Balmer took over. Granted it often times didn't work out well, anybody for active desktop, but at least you could seen signs of innovation.

This. I'm a Linux fanboi but Windows games are best run under Windows. It's less fuss and there's a greater selection.

As I recall, I tried to make VS Express work with my particular deployment environment (a 64 bits multi-threaded machine), but I encountered significant roadblocks which made it pretty clear that Microsoft wanted you to get the Professional version.

If you want to code in C/C++, it's because performance matters.

You'll never get as good a performance with GCC in Windows as you'll get with Linux or With Windows and VS.

Same thing for Apache and most open-source software which is made for Linux.

Windows is a more tightly integrated environment than Linux and Microsoft makes the parts.

If you want to really milk the juice out of your Windows machine, you gotta get Microsoft stuff and pay for it.

Agreed, although conversely, I find productivity software best works under Linux. Doing anything constructive under Windows is just a joke. I used Linux for years in translation and had to switch to Windows two years ago because I needed MS Office, Passolo and Trados, none of which work sufficiently well under WINE.

I've been pining for a return to OmegaT and OpenOffice/LibreOffice ever since.

GNU/Linux (OS itself and the ecosystem as whole) is too different from Windows for satisfying and short answer. Many things that done right in Linux, are done horribly wrong in Windows, and vice versa. I understood how terribly imperfect Windows is, only when moved to Ubuntu completely. Ubuntu is terribly imperfect as well, but for me its benefits strongly outweigh drawbacks. Ubuntu is free, it's very easy to install it on a virtual machine (Virtualbox, VMware Player, or whatever) without breaking anything, so there is no reason why not to try it and have it somewhere just in case.

Fingernail piercings is the next big thing, I called it.

But you can. :) They are cross-plattform.

I can, but that defeats the object of using MS Office and Trados in the first place, namely that customers insist on using the proprietary SDLXLIFF and TTX file formats and SDL TM server software that no other CAT software supports, and customers often use bizarre layouts in Microsoft Word that OpenOffice tends to bork.

If I could use OmegaT and LibreOffice without any problems, I'd have no need for Windoze really.

I have no idea what those formats are nor do I really care, but you seriously cannot insist on one of the XML file formats with your clients, even if it's the MS one?

Well, the laugh of it is that the ISO-approved XML standards - XLIFF and TMX for bilingual documents and translation memories respectively - are considered "industry standard" and work with absolutely every CAT (computer-assisted translation) program out there.

Trados Studio - which is made by SDL, which Microsoft has a 25% stake in - makes use of a "tweaked" version of the XLIFF format called SDLXLIFF, which is just different enough to ensure that it works with no other translation suite out there, and Trados Studio sets SDLXLIFF as the default format and requires a lengthy conversion process to use any other formats. The same applies to translation memories, and again, the formats are similar.

In short, Trados makes it as inconvenient as possible to use the open standards, and it's a kind of "open secret" in the translation community that Microsoft's stake in SDL was critical in ensuring this.

That is extremely slimy and I'm surprised that no one has simply made the automated conversion from this modified version transparent when using the FOSS equivalent programs.