MS does bully schools...
I taught an A+ certification course at a business development center run by the local community college. They had 2 and 3 day courses for workers to refresh/update skills on a number of applications, there was at least one running every day.
They were certified by the manufacturers to teach these courses, eg Microsoft checked them out and gave them their blessing to run outlook, word, excel and basic windows courses.
Originally they also ran Corel WordPerfect courses, which were more popular than the word course. The BDC took polls and over the years the secretaries and such attending the classes preferred WordPerfect over word, regardless of which they actually used at work.
Microsoft came by (literally a man dropped in) and told the BDC in no uncertain terms that either the WordPerfect course goes, or all the Microsoft courses will go, along with the certifications from MS.
Straight up threat. Bullying as plain as the nose on yer face. I'm sure this was not a unique situation.
The textbook Jack is talking about may well be trying to earn brownie points in a similar atmosphere to what I witnessed at the BDC.
Fact is most techs coming out of school are going to go to work on Microsoft systems. How does a textbook publisher distinguish themselves and gain the favor of Microsoft? It's probably a pretty competitive market, those text books.
Maybe the FUD is just sucking up to the 800 Lb gorilla in the room?
