Microsoft's dominance was gained through activity that was illegal, and for which it was convicted in courts, in half a dozen countries around the world.
This kind of thing is happening all of the time in the realms of software houses, but I'm not condoning it, Software houses/vendors have be throwing litigations at each other like clowns with custard pies for years. It made such big news with Microsoft because Microsoft is as big as an IT company can get, and it is everywhere - so it will get stung wherever opposition can sting it. You may remember SCO wanting to scrub out Linux for misappropriated code. It really is part and parcel of the business, including corporate espionage, etc. I've been invited to many Microsoft events in the past, and the people who were at the core of the business weren't just paper, or *.docx, pushers, they had a real passion for their intrinsic involvement in their products.
The issue is clearly with the OS. (We've been told that by Microsoft Tech Support, HP Tech Support, GW Micro Tech Support, Freedom Scientific Tech Support, and the A11Y tech support we use. The faults are not intermittent. They are predictable, and unstoppable. Well, they are stoppable, but only if uses a computer that has a keyboard, mouse, and monitor. IOW, a computer that fails section 508 criteria.)
What you show here is that it is not an issue with the OS, but it is potentially a software issue. Windows requires drivers to operate any and all attached hardware, and this is an issue for the hardware vendor. I've seen it many, many times where a person with get a combination of computer components that are hot off the press, really new high-end kit, and then wonder why they are having problems. It is always a driver supplied issue, if not a hardware fault. It's a similar issue with older kit also, I had a Netgear sc101 external storage drive which was fabulous with XP, and Vista. But when Windows 7 arrived the Netgear driver was incompatible, and nothing came from Netgear. I used a workaround with a Vista driver and a registry tweak, and things worked out again.
What we must take from this is that, Windows has to take the middle ground of a unisex, one size fits all, approach... following this the hardware vendors should pick up the slack with their drivers and supporting software. If Microsoft were as hardnosed and stiffnecked as Apple, then I would guess that not as many people would be as computer literate as they are now, let alone own a computer.
FWIW, 7/24/365 paid tech support for Linux is available. Paid level 1 tech support for Linux costs roughly the same as paid level 2 tech support for Windows. Paid level 2 tech support for Linux costs roughly the same as paid level 3 tech support for Windows.
If you took your Linux computer to a corner shop to have them look at the problem, the chances are they would not know where to start diagnosing it. Many Internet Service Providers will only provide customer support for a Windows based system. There are only a few versions of Windows floating around out there, and each one has enough similarity and familiarity to be adequately supported. Linux is not so easy to deal with.
All this said, if I could completely switch to Linux, I would, but I at the moment I can't.
For various reasons, the firms that provide paid tech support for Linux do not advertise that aspect of their business.
Which versions of Linux do they support? Mint, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Suse, Puppy, There are about 100 listed in the link below, but there are over 300 or 400 active versions aside from these.
http://distrowatch.com/
If any haven't tried Linux yet, do it. You can set it up to dual boot from your PC. If you download Ubuntu, you can use it by just booting of the DVD and not installing it. Try it. :-)