I agree that MS are doing the world a great service, but otherwise I understand barely a word of your post.
Looking back just a few years, if you wanted a network then you had to pay someone like Novelle a huge amount of cash for the software. These days, Windows et al include basic networking in the cost of the OS. With Windows '95 and NT, Microsoft broke what was in danger of becoming a monopoly on networking and prices crashed as a result.
Most MS software is priced at a level far below what it would otherwise have been, but it's still expensive enough to encourage competition. Rock bottom prices give no incentive to develop new products. We have plenty of economical options for everything at the moment, and I think that's largely down to MS. I don't really remember the days when IBM was God, but I do remember that everything was pretty damned big and expensive. These days, Microsoft SBS is a few hundred pounds and very few people run IBM anything.
*corrections in italics. </Grammar Nazi>
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