Once a convert, always a convert ...
I can't believe the gist of this story. The Microsofties that I met, and the Microsofties that we have in our organisation, will defend the Beast From Redmond until their death.
When things go wrong in the colourful world of MS, and a new OS needs to be bought, these are the people who were happily shelling out the license fees for W2K, once their expenditure for ME was found to be wasted. They are even grateful and fork out the money with pleasure, thankful that Microsoft is willing to share The Most Advanced Operating System in this world with them. No kidding. And when I point out how Exchange is a dog to administrate, and that e-mail is no rocket science, and what they actually ought to do, is - almost nothing, because a mail server is supposed to 'just work', they'll tell me how thankful they are not to have to touch that dreadful *nix-command-line [I cite].
And this rambling could go on and on. No, I don't believe the message. I rather read the postings as trying to appeal to the Big Brother not to hit one with 50 strokes of the cane, but rather with 10 only. "Be kind to me, pleeeezzze, and make my boss and my users happy. I luv u, I luv u, I luv u!"
"Nobody has ever been fired for buying Microsoft" still holds water. Unfortunately. I can kind of understand the mindset of my colleagues sitting on MS products. You suffer like hell, but you have a secure job. No need to learn anything new. Qualification comes from a boot-camp.
It is overall not too convenient, but also not too bad. The bit of maso is hidden in most of us, and if you can bring it out, it feeds the family.
</sarcasm>