When the door opened my back was turned, but I could tell who it was by his smell. It was a mixture of Pacific salt air and variants of “coffee” that cost upward of $40 a gallon. Direct from Redmond, Wash., the Microsoft Man had some questions for me.

“We’ve been tracking your computer usage, and we don’t like what we see. The last time you used Internet Explorer on your home computer was in late July. You’ve written plenty of things but haven’t touched Word at home more than twice since May.” And then he took a good look at my computer — the handles, the graphite, the logo. “Oh.” He sneered.

“You’re one of them. I don’t see why we have to keep putting up with … your kind.” My kind?

“You’re trying to live a life without Microsoft. And that is something we just can’t allow.”

Why not? Why shouldn’t I be free of gigantic virus attacks that, according to BusinessWeek, may cost the country a billion dollars in productivity?

“Now you know we try to help our users when that happens.”

Sure. You “help” them by forcing them to retrieve a patch for something that never should have been vulnerable. The recent Blaster and SoBig viruses exploited flaws that require a fix about as complicated as the coding equivalent of shutting a door, yet software is shipped with all those holes wide open.

But why worry when your problems can be blamed on President Bush? Joe Lieberman did just that. The Des Moines Register quoted him as saying on Aug. 15 the Northeast blackout and virus attacks “remind us that the Bush administration has simply not done enough … to protect the security of the American people from terrorist attacks.” So it’s not your shoddy work — it’s Bush’s fault.

I suppose that it was Clinton’s fault when, in 1997, the USS Yorktown was dead in the water after the NT software running the ship tried to divide by zero.

“That was experimental.” (And according to a Wired article, it was.)

But what about the black eye you gave the Department of Homeland Security? The department named Microsoft as its “primary technology provider” July 15. Then, less than 24 hours later, according to The Associated Press, “Microsoft acknowledged a critical vulnerability … in nearly all versions of its flagship Windows operating system software.”

“But all they had to do was install the patch.”

Sure, that’s “all they had to do.” Literally dozens of patches have been issued in 2003 alone. Why should the burden be on the consumer when you screw up, and screw up often?

Now the Microsoft Man was getting hostile. “But you’re on a Macintosh. No one writes viruses for the Mac.”

True. “Security through obscurity” could be valid — and yet, there’s most likely more to it.

Last week, Charles Gaba of The Mac Observer Web site did an informal virus check through Network Associates, makers of McAfee and Virex antivirus programs. After searching its information library, he found 26 regular viruses for the Mac. Twenty-six out of 71,000 — and they only affected Mac OS 9 and below. There were more than 20 times that number of Word and Excel macro viruses for the Mac. The Mac is not perfect in protecting everyone from everything, but it’s a lot closer than Windows.

“That reminds me. You’ve barely touched Word at all.”

That’s right. You see, I like using programs that do what I expect it to do out of the box. AppleWorks can save in Word format, but more than that, it does what I want it to, without me having to change anything. It doesn’t start out by pretending it knows what I want.

“You’re dangerous. You’re too close to living a Microsoft-free life. If we let you do that, more people might think it possible. That can’t happen.”

Really? Do you think more people will enjoy being treated like second-class citizens in the computer world? I can’t watch video at ESPN anymore, nor can I watch video at WHO or KCRG’s Web sites, because I won’t install the Windows Media plugin — and that’s just for starters.

Sure, it’s possible to live a Microsoft-free life, but there are times when it’s really hard. If the world can’t live without a specific company to supply them with certain products — there’s a word for that, and Standard Oil and AT&T learned its meaning the hard way, even though you didn’t …

“Enough!” The Microsoft Man was flustered and irate. “One day you’ll see that you can’t live without us. Every business that dumps its Macs, every application that doesn’t get ported over, gets us that much closer to solidifying our grip on your world.”

But until that time you can’t stop me from trying. Then, and only then, will the world realize just how much you have held them back from what computing can be.