The folks at LivingWithoutMicrosoft discover a 2002 study by Harvard Business School professors that actually says Microsoft has been successful because the products are pretty good. Shock horror.

“... it is argued that Microsoft's success over the last two decades owes less to their bully tactics and more to innovation. In their study the professors found that, “Microsoft products were consistently rated highly when compared with competitive offerings, a result that held true across different product categories and over time. On average, Microsoft products ”won“ more than two-thirds of the competitive reviews we examined. Indeed, only once in fifteen years did Microsoft products fail to win more than 50% of these reviews. Given the number and diversity of competitors they faced in each different product category, this consistently high performance is striking.” “