Seventeen years of Readers' Choice Awards have brought 17 years of surprises and many close contests -- but none as close as this year's horse race between Microsoft and Apple for Favorite Vendor. In the end, the two giants tied statistically, but Microsoft edged ahead with just three votes. The final tally: Microsoft won 16.2 percent of readers' hearts and Apple had the support of 15.9 percent. Favorite Vendor wasn't the only contest too close to call if the results were rounded to the nearest whole number -- Best Application Server, Best Enterprise Storage Product, and Best Networking Product were also neck and neck until the bitter end. So we decided to publish the ballot results to the tenth of a percent, ensuring that readers' true choices were maintained in the final results.
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