The single-greatest reason to avoid Microsoft is that they're willing to sacrifice any and all partners (customers, retailers, developers, employees, etc) to at

The single-greatest reason to avoid Microsoft is that they're willing to sacrifice any and all partners (customers, retailers, developers, employees, etc) to attract more of the others. As a customer you can count on Microsoft adding DRM to the product if anyone else in their development chain asks for it. As a developer you can count on Microsoft making uncomfortable changes without ensuring the devs can work with it. As an employer it's better than EA... mostly. As a retailer, Microsoft is desperately trying to cut you out of all extended revenue streams while still dependent on you to sell the lock-in to the customer in the first place. You're pretty much guaranteed to be screwed with one way or another - to help MS, to help a favored partner, or just as they reposition a project (often in the trash). WP7 could come with a free gold bar and would still be overpriced.