Comment by hliyan

I wouldn't exactly use the word evil, but I do remember a time when desktop hardware and software were not so massively dominated by one or two companies. I could buy a 386 or 486 computer from any number of vendors, buy expansion cards (graphics, sound, MIDI etc.) from various other vendors, buy hard disks and optical drives from yet more vendors, and even buy DIMM memory modules from yet more vendors, and put it all together myself. Yes the machine would run DOS or Windows, but most software outside the Office suite came from various different vendors (remember Norton, Borland, Corel?)

Not blaming MS per se (much of my examples above are H/W), but the type of "consolidation" companies such as MS engaged in, killed a lot of small to medium computer hardware and software businesses.