Why is Microsoft popular?

I don't like Oracle books either, and I very much dislike Sybex. But I wonder if MS is popular because there are so many books, or if there are so many books because MS is so popular... I think it's the latter...

There are good books that aren't published by MS. Sybex is one of my favorite distributors... As to why MS is popular, well, they managed through illegal (as shown by court verdicts) and unethical means to gain a monopolistic hold on the OS market. This is changing, but slowly. In any case, with the monopoly they became well known, and that is what 'popularity' is anyways. So yes, I think that FUD and monopolistic practices are what made MS popular. Sounds like a high school bully to me...

No. means you have the wrong oracle books. There are some great books on Oracle from Oracle.

MS is popular because it has a great marketing department and they provided software for PCs when nobody else was providing good PC software.

MS isnt popular. Were just used to using it ever since Window nt was released and windows 95 followed and so forth. If we had a choice, I wouldnt use MS, but if not MS, Apple? Apple sucks too. Hah. Linux is probably the best operating system out there. You dont use Linux unless you know what your doing. Thats why the majority of people buy MS computers, is because they dont know how to use them and MS is available for them whether they suck or not. What to compare to it if you dont know what else is out there? ;p

Actually "thunder2sys" is right for the most part.

But the real segue was that IBM chose to use MS DOS for their OS on their personal computers.

That is what made MS the standard for business.