Things are different around here. Teams are expected to deliver great products on their own, not rely on some artificial lock-in to force adoption. You see this all over - we offer Linux on Azure, you can federate AD with Google Apps, we release dozens of apps for iOS and Android, and we are opening up many many APIs for rich integration. (Opinion my own obviously).

This has been the official line for a while but it has never been that way when it actually matters (ie. Windows and Office).

That's why some people are pleasantly surprised by this.

I liked your comment and voted you up but Microsoft's Linux on Azure is really weird. It's obvious there's a windows thing somewhere up in the higher levels because of the way certs are done and ports are used. It's all very non-linuxy. If Microsoft is going to do something with linux they should do it right.

Fair points, and I have to say I'm pretty happy with the direction MS is going in these days. I have to say that an Office 365 subscription would be really nice to have, but is just too pricey. Dropbox integration is a nice feature, but is it enough? Maybe one of these days.