As a former MS employee around those years this is not entirely correct. Test people changed their titles to software engineers and were judged by that, this m

As a former MS employee around those years this is not entirely correct. Test people changed their titles to software engineers and were judged by that, this means that if you could code (and MS helped with that when necessary) you were fine. Since MS favored test people who can code anyway that wasn't a big problem for most, but not all. Personally I used a macbook and so are many of my colleagues,some even use Linux machines- all on a need to basis.