Excel and Visual Studio, .NET Runtime and C#, Windows 2000 were among the best things for their time. I think there were like 2-3 months in which even internet explorer was the best browser on the market

My operating system teacher was a hardcore Linux zealot and "M$" hater. But one day he praised Microsoft for Active Directory and group policies. Comparable, well integrated easy to use solutions didn't exist at the time. (mid 2000s). Batch scripts were lame though...