Any software taken today has a lot of alternatives. A user or a developer gets to pick from various options. But, Microsoft has most of the timebeen the first one to develop and release powerful tools and services in the market. This being told, I can say that I have been impacted by Microsoft in two ways.Firstly, as a casual user or a non professional. Iremember using Windows as a kid. Without me knowing, Microsoft was running in the backgroundhelping me bring out my artistic skills, startling me with the possibilities of computer and computing and igniting the love for technology that has grown into my life’s passion. Without any prior training , I was able to use the OS for my routine tasks like, editing documents, browsing the web, listening to music or playing games or using Paint. The tools like MS Office, Windows media player, Internet explorer was there to serve me and I was immensely benefited by it.. Butthis was just the beginning, and it is for alot of my generation.Secondly, the more important way I have been impacted is, as a developer. The whole Microsoft developer’s framework has been a boon to me. It is powerful, and at times when the use of those toolswould diminish,Microsoftwould come back with much better ones.I remember the early days of developing GUI software with Visual Basics, or one of thefirst HTML editor, the MS Front Page for creating and administrating websites. Then, the Microsoft SQL server databasewas provided for data applications. Also, at times when I was using trivial IDEs for programming, my scope was restricted due to very limited capabilities and that lead to unproductive work and that was when I got Visual Studio, to create and maintain projects and work in a more efficient manner.I have been blogging since a year now and Bing Webmaster has been there withme everyday to quench my thirst for dataand statistics of myblog.Itprovides me with very useful data and it helps me by showing my mistakes or what I have done right and I act accordingly to make my blog a much search friendly weblog. Be it just the basic stats and view count or the advanced stats like the crawl error and percentage wise comparison of views or allowing me to create efficient site maps, its all at one place.So yes, Microsoft has impacted my life as a casual end user and i am glad about it
