There seem to be many on this site who don't understand why some people might have something against Microsoft. A short history of some of their various transgressions has been posted on groklaw here.

Some good quotes from the article:

"Microsoft first proposed to Netscape that, rather than compete with each other, the two companies should enter an illegal conspiracy to divide up the market. When Netscape refused, Microsoft then used its Windows monopoly to, in Microsoft's own words, 'cut off Netscape's air supply.'"
--Joel Klein, Assistant Attorney General (quoting Paul Maritz, Microsoft's then-Group Vice President of the Platform Applications Group)

"I have decided that we should not publish these [Windows 95 user interface]
extensions. We should wait until we have a way to do a high level of integration
that will be harder for likes of Notes, WordPerfect to achieve, and which will give
Office a real advantage.... We can't compete with Lotus and WordPerfect/Novell without this."
--Bill Gates, Microsoft founder and then-CEO

"This anti-trust thing will blow over. We haven't changed our business practices at all."
-- Bill Gates, Microsoft founder and then-CEO (1995)

"Kill cross-platform Java by grow[ing] the polluted Java market."
--MicrosoftVJ98 SKUs and Pricing Proposal

"[W]e should just quietly grow j++ share and assume that people will take more
advantage of our classes without ever realizing they are building win32-only java
apps."
--Microsoft's Thomas Reardon

RealNetworks "is like Netscape. The only difference is we have a chance to start
this battle earlier in the game."
--Robert Muglia, Microsoft Senior Vice-President

"Please give me one good reason why we should even consider [enabling Microsoft technology to work on competing systems]. (Hint: any good answer needs to include making more money and helping kill Unix, Sybase or Oracle.)"
--James Allchin, Microsoft Senior Vice-President

"The approach we will take is to detect dr [DOS] and refuse to load. The error
message should be something like 'Invalid device driver interface.'"
--Phillip Barrett, Microsoft Windows Development Manager

"Intel has to accept that when we have a solution we like that is decent that that is the solution that wins." --Bill Gates, Microsoft founder and then-CEO

"If we own the key 'franchises' built on top of the operating system, we
dramatically widen the 'moat' that protects the operating system business.... We hope to make a lot of money off these franchises, but even more important is thatthey should protect our Windows royalty per PC."
--Jeff Raikes, Microsoft President

Need me to start collecting all the bullshit Apple has done recently?

Microsoft is father, Microsoft is mother.

Microsoft is father, Microsoft is mother.

Microsoft is father, Microsoft is mother.

Microsoft is father, Microsoft is mother.

Microsoft is father, Microsoft is mother.

Microsoft is father, Microsoft is mother.

Microsoft is father, Microsoft is mother.

Microsoft is fa...

I think that generally where a company has market power they will act against the best interests of the consumer and attempt to derive a much higher producer surplus than they could get otherwise.

Microsoft is the scum of the earth with many of their unethical business pratices, nothing new. I'm glad that MS were forced to make Internet Explorer optional on Windows 7.

I have no love for apple. My Ex used to work for them and they treated her very badly.

Im sorry about that.

Anyway, how do you quantify anti-competitive behaviour? Im not talking semantics, im talking about comparing one company to another and judging that a certain level is acceptable and a certain level isn't. There are companies using poor tactics all over the place, so how would you say Microsoft is worthy of special attention above these other companies?

lol. No one forced MS to make it option. They did it on their own.

Name me 1 company that doesn't have questionable practices?

Remember the HP internal spying incident where the CEO spied on its board of directors with phone tabs?

MS is overly competitive for sure...but they employ many people...provide charity donations the size of small countries GDP and believe it or not...in most cases push the industry they are involved with forward.

Under orthodox models, monopolists will price above the point where MC=MR as you say. However, you have to be the first I've encountered to say this is in the interest of consumers. Usually the argument from classical liberals is that monopolies are impossible to maintain for a significant period without state interference.

Microsoft is good.
Every company is trying to eat the competition.
And Microsoft is excellent doing that.

Welcome in the real world.

We do not live in a Teletubbies world.