JASC is not part of Microsucks. The evidence I have seen to support that, over many years is as follows:

1. For many years their main product has been consistently much cheaper than the competition.

2. Again, for as long as I can remember, it has shown no signs of "creeping featurism", a cause of many M$ bugs.

3. Also, it has for a long time been fully compatible with a large number of industry-standard file formats. I don't think Bill can even spell "standard", far less know what it means.

4. It actually works as a drawing program, which is not its main use in my case, as I mainly adjust images from my digital camera. I have yet to see anything come out of Redmond which actually lets you draw in a sensible manner. Today at work for example, I had to draw some simple things in Excel, which both as a spreadsheet and a drawing package is best described as crippleware.

5. Finally, how many bugs does it have? Some minor ones I expect, but in the best traditions of cut-price software and even shareware, it has been consistently more stable, in my experience, than the expensive competition.

No, no similarity at all with the trash which comes out of Redmond. I think you will find that the bloated code is mainly due to the constantly shifting Windoze API, and maybe the development tools, which seems to make all programs get forever bigger.

It you want other examples of programs which are very worthwhile to purchase, and show no signs at all of the characteristics of a Redmond product, try Winzip. Again, inexpensive, but very good at what it does, too good in fact to have had any input from Bill.

If it is good, stable, simple, low cost, and efficient at its purpose, it is most unlikely to have come from M$.

Alan Campbel