To me, innovation should drive the technology sector. Companies should grow through the invention of new ideas or methodologies, or by vastly improving current technologies. Technology should be driven by the consumer, not by fear or monopoly. These products should make consumer's lives easier, not restrict or police them.

That being said, I'm done with the behemoth known as Microsoft. Why?

We can start with how the company conducts business. Microsoft has always aspired to be a monopoly, not just a top competitor. They don't want to be the best choice, they want to be the only choice. They don't want to work hard developing products, innovating or researching. No, they want to spend their time suing, patenting and locking their products down. I can site the anti-trust lawsuit filed against Microsoft nearly 10 years ago for the manner in which they conducted business with system builders and distributors, as well as the level of integration Internet Explorer had with Windows.

We can talk about undocumented APIs, "uncertified" driver rejection, Vista's new DRM lock downs, kernel lock downs and the fact that Microsoft products, less Office and maybe X-Box, are just inferior.

But these reasons didn't "break the camel's back." For me, it was two things.

I recently upgraded my video card and processor and added RAM to my system. Upon booting into Windows, I tried to edit a Word document using Office. I received a nice notification saying that Office had detected too many changes to my computer and I would have to reactivate the software. Rather than inserting my Office disk, I downloaded and installed Open Office. I guess Microsoft thinks there are no viable competitors out there, a belief in which, if held true, they are mistaken. Even if I was pirating a copy of Office, will my $200 make a difference to a company that "announced revenue of $14.40 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2007, a 32% increase over the same period of the prior year?" That's 14.4 billion dollars in 3 months. And they're going to lock down my copy of Office???

What "sealed the deal" for me was Microsoft claiming that Open Source Software violated 235 of it's patents. If you can't beat 'em, sue 'em. Linux, especially the Ubuntu and, my favorite, the Kubuntu distributions have recently gained momentum and press as a stable choice for the desktop operating system (let's face it, Linux is the choice for enterprise servers).

So what exactly did Open Source do that infringed on Microsoft's patents? The company won't say. My guess is they are really simple things that are easily changed, such as double clicking. Yes, Microsoft does hold a patent on double clicking, although it appears to only apply to hand-held computers. Patents such as these will eventually destroy the software industry.

I ran into a problem with Kubuntu last night after an upgrade. Because I use a proprietary video driver, I have to make the driver from scratch after every kernel upgrade. For some reason, I have to build the driver every boot to get a GUI.

I would rather do this than use Microsoft software. I can do nearly everything I do on Windows on Linux. And the one or two things I can't, I always have Wine or my trusty virtual machine. I rarely use Windows as it is and as time goes by and I learn more, I will eventually not need it at all. That's all it takes is patience and study. I feel sorry for anyone who is unwilling or unable to take the time to switch for I see more restrictions and problems ahead with Microsoft.