I'm so glad I didn't hold out for Vista

The much missed Chris Lightfoot used to do a lovely line in posts on adventures in customer services (unfortunately I can't seem to get his blog to work at the moment, but its all still in Google's cache somewhere if you look). This post from the BBC's Robert Peston about his problems with Vista brought them to mind.

Quick synopsis, once our intrepid BBC business editor had finally got his new version of Vista to work he found that none of his other bits of hardware (palm top, digital dictaphone etc.) will work with it. Even his XP version of Microsoft Outlook won't work properly!

Object lesson one in why monopolies are a bad thing. Would Microsoft release such shoddy products if it had any meaningful competition? Surely its time that the competition authorities stopped nibbling around at the edges and just broke Microsoft up. Its current market domination is bad for consumers in the short-term, and probably bad for its shareholders in the long-term as at some point it will become so flabby and complacent that the first whiff of competition will cause it to implode.