To say that Microsoft (NASDAQ : MSFT) has the most dominant operating system in Windows is like saying Neo is the dominant figure in The Matrix -- these are facts that don't really need to be said. To say that Windows is the best operating system however and you'll see a whole bunch of folks up in arms and endless debates in public forums. The most dominant does not equate the best... or does it?

Regardless of the polarized opinion on this issue, the fact remains that Windows is what almost every PC user has in his/her machine, whether for work, to surf the Internet, to watch movies or to play games. It is the primary gaming platform for the PC and for game developers, the matter of priorities insofar as choice of OS support is concerned becomes much less of a headache (although a number will argue with this statement!). With Windows occupying the majority of desktops around the world, you'd think Microsoft really wouldn't need to promote their OS to various developers, right? Well, wrong. There is such a department in Microsoft that specializes in evangelizing the benefits of using Windows and nothing else as the primary, if not the only, game development platform.

We had the opportunity to speak with Chris Donahue of Microsoft recently. Being the Lead Evangelist for Windows when it comes to convincing developers that Windows is the best there is, we decided to ask him a variety of questions, ranging from what he actually does, to DirectX and its importance, to companies like NVIDIA (NASDAQ : NVDA) and ATI (NASDAQ : ATYT) , to the next major Microsoft operating system codenamed Longhorn. Chris was previously the manager of Developer Relations at NVIDIA so he should provide some interesting insights about working with the independent hardware vendors (IHVs) as well. Chris is a genuinely nice guy, gets on very well with developers, doesn't really like following procedures and had spent countless hours playing Asteroids on his Atari 2600. This is the second time that this interviewer has interviewed Chris (the first was at another website, back in June 2000 when Chris was still with NVIDIA).