Microsoft has a lot of good programmers and they can write a lot of software. As Windows was growing, Microsoft programmers gobbled up more and more programs pulling them into Windows or Office and giving them away for free with those products.

Many software companies that specialized in individual applications went out of business as Microsoft swallowed up their fields.

After the lawsuits with Netscape and Quicken, Microsoft has taken a different approach in certain instances, at least it
seems that way to me. One of these is with Paint.net.

Microsoft includes a weak graphics program called Paint with Windows. Microsoft is capable of writing a graphics software package that could put Photoshop and the rest out of business and give it away for free. I imagine they might have one in-house, but I suppose to avoid more lawsuits, they have avoided including one in Windows.

However, they supported the Paint.net project, which is a powerful, free graphics program, which you can find here. www.getpaint.net

Or if you prefer, you can try this free image editing program www.gimp.org

For audio editing see the excellent and free Audacity www.audacity.sourceforge.net

You can record and edit audio with no restrictions on length.

By Andrew Weitzen (c) 2010

Weitzen is the publisher of several online Internet journals including: InternetHandholding.com, DomainNames.gs, DotNetNuke.bz, Programmer.bz, Software.vg, WebHosting.vg