I started out with Oracle on AIX, then Sybase on Solaris, then Postgres 8.3 on Windows and Linux, and am currently using MS SQL Server. Postgress (8.3 on Linux)

I started out with Oracle on AIX, then Sybase on Solaris, then Postgres 8.3 on Windows and Linux, and am currently using MS SQL Server. Postgress (8.3 on Linux) is currently used for an inventory db in house, and SQL Server is used for most apps that reside at customer premises. Sybase was better than Oracle, and Postgres was just as good as Sybase at that time. But SQL Server (version 2005 on) has stood taller than all of them in my view. Excellent management tools, stable, reliable and no performance issues for our apps. Most of our apps are write light and read heavy with thousands of users hitting the db - served off one Win 2003 server (we have a warm spare). So there is some truth to your statement about nobody choosing to use it - for us the primary motivation to not use it internally was cost. At our customer premises they picked up the tab. We have MSDN so sql server development licenses are not an issue. Have not met a Microsoft salesperson yet!