I know I'm trolling a bit by making this statement but I actually feel strongly about it. I'm sick of hearing about America this and America that. America does not play by a fair set of economic, safety, and environmental rules. I have a hard time lauding any American progress. They artificially manipulate their currency, printing money whenever they feel like it and engage in trade protectionism which hinders the world's economy.

I'm British and I've been on high speed trains in Europe and China. The other side of the pond is right to be jealous. America needs to play catch up on this bit of tech.

Aren't Amazon's "most helpful" reviews simply reviews of reviews and thus suffer the exact same issue as you complain about?

Why keep it going? Because I live in China and I like it.

Actually no, I always use Baidu.com to download my music. Google flopped because it just doesn't provide what Chinese people want. It keeps thinking that providing American preferences to Chinese people will be successful. Baidu's search and other services like music are way behind Google's but Baidu understands the Chinese marketplace and provides services tailored to match.

Living in China I see that pirated versions of Microsoft Windows and Office, are the norm not the exception. It is actually difficult to buy the legit software. I remember hunting all over several cities looking for a real Windows 7 CD when it first came out to no avail. If you want the real software, there are only a few PC suppliers who ship with it pre installed. Small local dealers will use pirated software. But the problem is exacerbated because of peoples love for the familiar. Most people in China still like windows XP. I have seen new machines arrive with Windows 7 installed only to see the owner take it to a shop and have a pirated Windows XP installed instead.

The story also missed that while the pirated Windows comes pre-installed with malware, it also it comes pre installed with antivirus and firewalls that have been modified to ignore/allow the malware.

I am an engineer, though now teach at University. I've been using AutoCAD and originally it's lighter 2D version, Auto Sketch since 1990. I use Inkscape and my home desktop is Ubuntu. I can tell you first hand that Inkscape is nothing even remotely like AutoCAD. Not even close to the original AutoCAD from twenty years ago when I was a engineering student. Even twenty years ago AutoCAD was 3D. Inkscape more closely resembles Corel Draw. It is a vector drawing package for creating art not a CAD package for designing a house or a car.

GIMP is fine for amateurs to edit photos but it just doesn't have all the plugins that a pro must have and so must use Photoshop. The same goes for every other major field. In Linux there is no AutoCAD. There are other CAD apps but if you are an engineer it must be AutoCAD. Same goes for accounting software, education software, publishing, and so on.

Market segmentation is treated to simplistic in the article. It queries only why Linux has not taken hold in the desktop market but desktop subdivided into office users, and home users. Then these sub divide again. The Windows plus Office monopoly only applies to certain sections of the desktop market. For example a home user might not care about office if their main interest is games and internet. The real reason Linux hasn't taken off is that it has never been the best at anything other than servers where it met the simple requirement of not crashing too often and rarely needing a reboot against windows of ten years ago which needed rebooted every time you changed anything. Linux has never been the best office system, never the best games system, never the best photographer's system, etc. If it's not the best, why would anyone switch to it. This of course is not really Linux's fault. It is the lack of 3rd party offerings. If Linux convinced just one big name software to produce a Linux version, then it would have half a chance. For example, to get Adobe Photoshop natively on linux. Without a big name 3rd party offer on Linux it will never succeed.

You say "(we're certain it's a disgruntled former employee)" and also, "The thing is... we're not using illegally copied software."

I'd say you almost certainly have illegal software and said disgruntled former employee is probably the one who installed it without your permission.

The banking is tied to IE but any version will work. My GF uses the banking online here in China as well as buying on Taobao and such like. I have her using win7 with the latest IE version installed.

You're absolutely right on the money here. I've been living in China for 6 years now. My job back home was for some time in PC repair and later server admin so when I got here people naturally asked me to fix their PC's. When I encounter a freshly installed XP box here I run my AV on it instantly before connecting to the web because the pirated XP comes with malware and backdoors pre installed. The People making the pirated disks are getting thousands of ready to use zombie machines that they can then use to hack into your bank and servers back in the USA or send you all that spam that fills you inbox.

When my girlfriend inherited my old laptop last year, she wanted the Chinese language version of windows on it. She first went and got XP. After a few months it croaked and died so I wiped it and went to the shop with her to get a new install. The guy in the shop wanted to put on XP again. I insisted on win7. He said the laptop was too old and slow for win7 and it wouldn't work as well as XP. I told him I had used win7 on that laptop, in English, since the first beta and that win7 was faster than XP even on old systems and so on and so on. He didn't believe me but eventually installed win7 - which he clearly had never used before. When I looked at it, he had installed a hacked version of win7 beta - not the full version.

China is still 5 or more years behind us in many aspects of computing. It is a compulsory part of every university student to learn some basic computing skills. They are taught MS World/Excel, Dreamweaver, Flash and Visual Basic. The students find it boring and generally hate the class. There's no impetus to advance. They just want there computers to remain in 2001 status.

Maxthon id's as IE6 because it is IE6 with some plugins attached. A wolf in sheep's clothing.

Newer versions of IE do run on XP but if you have a pirated XP you can access windows update to download and install them.