While some critics slam Microsoft as not being innovative, there's little doubt about the company's influence on the tech industry if a poll released Tuesday is to be believed.

Microsoft products captured four of the top five spots in the poll, which asked techies to name what they think are their industry's most influential products of all time.

Top spot went to Internet Explorer, according to industry group CompTIA, the poll's sponsor. "By 1999, Internet Explorer had become the market's predominant Web browser, a position it still holds today," said CompTIA officials, in a statement. Microsoft first launched Explorer in 1995.

According to the most recent figures from market watcher Net Applications, Explorer currently holds 79% of the browser market.

Second place in the poll went to Microsoft Word, "the most widely used word processing application on the market," according to CompTIA. Windows 95 -- a breakthrough operating system for Microsoft in terms of user-friendliness -- ranked third.

The lone non-Microsoft product in the top five was Apple's iPod digital music player, which was tied for fourth place with Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet product.

CompTIA, the Computing Technology Industry Association, is made up of representatives from major hardware and software vendors and computer resellers. Of its 17 current directors and executives, only one is from Microsoft -- global affairs general manager John Kelly.

Rounding out the poll's top 10 are Research In Motion's BlackBerry PDA, Adobe's Photoshop digital imaging software, McAfee's VirusScan software, Palm's PalmPilot PDA, and Hewlett-Packard's LaserJet 4L laser printer.

The poll results are based on CompTIA's survey of 471 technology industry professionals between May and June.