HBG, I disagree that Linux is any MAJOR competition for Microsoft.
I have a fair amount of unix systems admin experience, mostly with SGI's irix and more recently Linux. My experience has been that Linux is a fantastic operating system and in itself is fairly easily installable, BUT after installing the OS and office tools etc. things can get very hard indeed for your average user.
A lot of the available software out there is not pre-comiled and you have to jump through too many hoops to install it. If it wasn't for one of my engineers being an absolute guru in this area I'd still be struggling myself.
So what's my point .... well just that there's no David vs. Goliath situation here at the moment. Linux has quickly taken a proportion of Microsoft's business and that IMHO has only been to the techy percentage of the computer using community. This is a significant percentage but the vast majority of the planet with a choice will continue to use Microsoft software for its plug and play features and ease of intergration etc. Obviously a massive percentage can't even choose and will continue on the Microsoft path.
Before anyone dissagrees I would like to add that we have a first class Microsoft IT specialist in our corporation and even he wouldn't be able to install Linux this weekend if you asked him too. No - he's very happy deploying active directory at the moment and will welcome TPM's and software like KTM when they arrive en mass.
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