Technically, all three have their strong and weak points.
Microsoft's monopoly gives them market dominance, bazillions of 3rd party developers, a huge community and the perception to management that it's a 'safe bet'. The downside is that from a quality point of view, their products are nothing more than mediocre. Thanks to many years of lock-in, not going away any time soon.
At this point, Vista looks like a trainwreck around the corner, but that doesn't matter - 4 years from now, 80%+ of the computers in the world will still run it simply because any new PC gets shipped with it preinstalled.
Mac: supposedly user friendly, althgouh personally I can't stand how they implemented many things, I prefer the windows 2000 classic UI and way of doing stuff. Perception of being easy. Arguably look pretty. Downsides is a much smaller selection of available software. Slightly more secure than windows, although in part that's because of the smaller market share - after all, apples releases plenty of patches for critical security vulnerabilities as well, just as Microsoft does.
Apple's control of the hardware means better overall stability of the OS, since it doesn't have to deal with a hundred thousand different hardware configurations with poorly written drivers.
Linux: Very nice for mail servers, web servers, file servers and database servers, but as of yet insignificant in the desktop market thanks to the lack of ''popular' software, especially games. While there is a huge market of freeware/open source stuff for those who know where to look, but you sure won't find anything at your local department store. Great OS for people who know what they're doing, but not for the majority of users (or even those who need specific applications / compatibility for work, since the world-at-large runs on windows)
Microsoft's monopoly gives them market dominance, bazillions of 3rd party developers, a huge community and the perception to management that it's a 'safe bet'. The downside is that from a quality point of view, their products are nothing more than mediocre. Thanks to many years of lock-in, not going away any time soon.
At this point, Vista looks like a trainwreck around the corner, but that doesn't matter - 4 years from now, 80%+ of the computers in the world will still run it simply because any new PC gets shipped with it preinstalled.
Mac: supposedly user friendly, althgouh personally I can't stand how they implemented many things, I prefer the windows 2000 classic UI and way of doing stuff. Perception of being easy. Arguably look pretty. Downsides is a much smaller selection of available software. Slightly more secure than windows, although in part that's because of the smaller market share - after all, apples releases plenty of patches for critical security vulnerabilities as well, just as Microsoft does.
Apple's control of the hardware means better overall stability of the OS, since it doesn't have to deal with a hundred thousand different hardware configurations with poorly written drivers.
Linux: Very nice for mail servers, web servers, file servers and database servers, but as of yet insignificant in the desktop market thanks to the lack of ''popular' software, especially games. While there is a huge market of freeware/open source stuff for those who know where to look, but you sure won't find anything at your local department store. Great OS for people who know what they're doing, but not for the majority of users (or even those who need specific applications / compatibility for work, since the world-at-large runs on windows)