might not be able to *write* the entire collection of Shakespeare, but with this setup, I'm quite sure that they would be able to digitize it!

Yah. The real heros bringing us the PC revolution was the guys reverse engineering the hardware/BIOS, and made cheap clones. The OS was just what became the de facto standard.

As we all know, DOS won over CP/M. CP/M was technically superior at the time, but lost for political and/or contract reasons, whatever.

Digital Research then went on to create a better DOS to compete. MS fought it with all means it could, and it went into oblivition.

At early stages, MS Windows was just a graphical shell on top of DOS. It wasn't particulary good either. There were competing graphical shells, for example Digital Research' GEM. Digital Research lost the patent lawsuit that MS essentially won, and GEM was limited to have only two windows simultaneously...who knows what it could have been.

MS has not had the technical best/superior solutions at any time. It was just better at legal and marketing stuff than anyone else.

The PC revolution would have come with or without MS. We'll never know how much innovation MS have killed on its way where it is, so to hail it as a savior is just plain stupid.