Microsoft has a very strong technology evangelizing program targeted at upper education. They almost pay colleges to offer Windows-centric courses and Windows-only labs.

<tongue-in-cheek>

The Linux users generally consider OSX a nice Linux-like OS that lacks a decent package manager ;-)

Much like Microsoft, the hardware is great.

</tongue-in-cheek>

Disclaimer: I am mostly a Linux user who also uses Macs for certain tasks.

I actually argued against the Windowsification of all of the classes in my college and pushed back at every opportunity. I don't think it makes sense for a college that is teaching computer science to dedicate all of their resources and tools on Windows only software. C++ is used outside of Microsoft Visual Studio, and the code that works in VS will most likely not even compile due to not being standards compliant (Although VS2010 has gotten MUCH better at it than older versions).

Many of my teachers eventually would relent and realise that yes I was right. TCP/IP is one of the classes I took in which Windows was required. TCP/IP is a network protocol, it is available in all major OS's. I turned in entire assignments with a simple note "Windows required, don't have Windows." Luckily I didn't end up getting docked points because they realised I already knew all of the information in the course.

One thing that was really nice, and I am surprised none of the teachers used it against me was the fact that with MSDNAA I as a student had access to thousands of dollars worth of Microsoft software. You name it I could download a free legal copy of it for use during my tenure at college as a student. Microsoft seems to have that on lock. What better way to get students to play with your platform than to have them use all your tools and software free of charge. Windows 7, Visual Studio, SQL, SharePoint, Exchange and others.

I agree that Visual Studio is an excellent IDE if you are targeting Windows and that SQL Server is a very good RDBMS, but why would anyone, except for some disgustingly wicked form of auto-flagellation, actually want Exchange and SharePoint?

Because familiarising yourself with software that costs thousands of dollars for free is kind of fun?

The fact that I have at least part of the knowledge makes me more valuable for an employer.

The real question is why would you want to be valuable to someone who uses Exchange and Sharepoint ;-)

Uuhm... Not to be overly flippant but me, my wife and my two daughters as well as my bootstrapped startup are supported by my work for a multinational financial organization. The technologies you mention essentially run this organization from an information delivery aspect.

I understand and I'm sorry if I came across as insensitive - I was half-joking. My own experience with these technologies is not favorable. Every year or so the company I work for experiences a day long mail outage. My wife has lost about a month of work because Sharepoint died and no backup could bring it back to life. And yes, both installs are maintained by people with plenty MC* certifications and, in both cases, the reasons for using the software were not tech-driven.

I hope you have better experiences.

It does not follow that since no workable backup strategy was in place that Sharepoint is rubbish.

Look: I'm not singing the praises of these softwares, it's big clunky enterprise stuff and it is boooring... None the less: it's running some pretty important processes that combined run a large portion of the worlds I.T.

Also Microcontroller nerds (at least at my school) swore by Windows. VS integration with Atmel's dev kit is reliable and eliminates some of the elbow grease needed to work with those things (and I have had some nightmares working with them).

Hey we have homebrew nowadays :P

And microsoft is actually really generous towards students, I can get basically any software except for office for free.

> Hey we have homebrew nowadays :P

When I'm on a Mac, I'm a ports guy. MacPorts is probably the first thing I install on every Mac I lay my hands upon. That, iTerm2 and Cathode (who can resist that?)

> And microsoft is actually really generous towards students, I can get basically any software except for office for free.

The first one is always free. They will only bill you when you actually need what they offer. Chances are, when you do, you won't be able to easily move away.

Really? That's actually quite surprising to me. I'd say at this point in my undergrad the majority of people in my class use Linux, followed by OS X, followed by Windows (as their development machine, I'm confident that a good number of those Linux users also have Windows installed).