I've always had this nasty feeling that Microsoft and the hardware manufacturers cooperate and Microsoft put malware (or bad code) into their system to make sure that hardware degrades (mainly overheating processor) and force customers to continually buy new hardware.

I like the headline of this thread, and I think the Spanish airforce is onto something. Sadly corruption still rules the public software market in Europe. Any attemps to switch to more viable long term solutions are met with bribes by Microsoft to keep hold of the market. There is also a complete lack of cooperation in Europe in regards to software. We could easily have a public datapark that would last decades and shared software solutions that would be free and continually developed (and bring work and competence to European workers).

Instead we stick with the American solutions. I think probably a larger political question of empires and subject states etc, but it's not really to our benefit (Europe) to stay with the current solutions instead of cooperating across Europe to implement new and open/free solutions developed locally.