"Business people" love Microsoft because they think Microsoft and That's nonsense. "Business people" love Microsoft because a) they think that if they buy the same as everybody else, there will be no problems exchanging mail, documents etc with other companies, b) they know that they can easily find staff who knows how to use MS products, and c) they assume that if they buy from a large corporation they can always get some reasonable level of support, the products and support will be around for the foreseeable future, and if something really bad happens, they expect they can get help to fix it. They also prefer to get everything from one place since it is easier to speak to one supplier than several, and the products can be expected to interoperate, without several different supplier pointing their fingers at each other when something doesn't work. However, in Europe quite a few government entities and private companies have got fed up with MSs total dominance, and have begun mandating the use of open source tools. The Swedish government's public procurement of software includes both proprietary software and open source software. /Jonas