I am sorry to disagree with you but have you stopped and wandered how MS got where it is?
How did MS got all the market share in the first place? It is pure and simple a result of capitalism. They got the market share by appealing to customers. By offering them what they wanted. Their products may not be the greatest most magnificent pieces of software around, Linux might be better in certain scenarios, but when you come up with software that is EASY to use, user friendly, does not take half your life to set up, and allows you to get to your job in less than an hour, then you will get market share. The users don't care about what magic algorithm is used to make something work, they don't care how it works as long as it works. People want to use computers to solve real life problems not to learn how they work. Nobody cares how many pipelines a cpu has, how many shaders a gpu has, they care about performance and cost. The real question is "can I do my work with this?" not "how is this implemented to do this task?”. So I maybe it’s better if MS buys Yahoo. At least then all their services will get integrated with MS software, mail in outlook. Messenger will really integrate with Live Messenger(that is another thing MS excels at integration of software, IE with explorer with media player with office …. ). You rant about Silverlight but isn’t flash proprietary? Isn’t it owned by Adobe? And the tools to develop content cost more than a small car. Isn’t this an Adobe monopoly? In my opinion you fail see the big picture and ask the right questions, the how and the why relating to MS dominance in the marketplace.

Best of Luck NSZT

... where do you want to go to die?

My opinionated arrogant geek flatmate who has always been PC only and who passionately hates 'mac zealots', recently bought a Mac Pro and a Macbook Air. Now the guy's raving about how superior the Mac environment is to Vista.

He went Mac due to the fact he was running Vista on his Athlon FX60 4GB RAM machine and it pissed him off. He wanted to buy new OEM laptop / workstation and none of the offerings he wanted came with XP. So, he was forced to look at Macs... and now he's so glad that Vista forced him to look out of the PC fold. He's recommending Mac to everyone he knows now, and in fact, having seen how seamlessly his Macbook Air + Mac Pro + Ipod Touch setup works together I must say I've been converted as well.

My next machine/s are going to be Macs, and when I provide advice for my parents and my relatives who always come to me it's going to be to buy Mac. It's more expensive, but, it's so much better designed and so much more robust.

Microsoft will have to do miracles to win my flatmate back. And they'll have to do more than miracles to win me back, even though I haven't bought a Mac yet...

bla bla bla I stopped reading 2 paragraphs in after realizing you went on for pages...man you're boring!

I absolutely hate all yahoo software... after the y bought the konfabulator desktop widget software the next update sucked.

Also while I have had no problems with XP...but I make a lot of money off of other peoples troubles with it.... but no personal problems...well... XP 64 driver support is very ME 1 ish

Vista.....I was stupid or brave enough to beta test it .... beta 2 was slow buggy and self destructed itself in 3 months like 95 hmm.... an update was released that fixed that.....RC1 was rock solid on my hardware...RTM hey thats what I got now...was hell.... the drivers were better for the RC1 than both RC2 and RTM....

well after the first to weeks of hell they fixed the drivers and It has not crashed since* with one exception....CPU Mark2.1 will crash it every time.... It works on 2000, XP, and xp64, also vista beta2 but crashes on RC1, RC2 and RTM...and SP1....I don't know what they did but no worky

Heck it even works on my fedora laptop running wine....but not Vista oh no to good for a benchmark.....
maybe they broke it so ppl couldnt see how freakin slow vista is.

Well If yall had ever tried the beta you would think RTM is fast... and in reality mine is now.... I have super tweaked it but still have superfetch running....
I figured that comparing its speed to my XP install was kinda unfair... after all XP has been speed optimized for howmany years now?


Anyhow...still have a love hate relationship with vista...love on my machine 

hate on any oem machine too much bloatware they always suck.

well what I don't want to see hapen is a mac tackover ... I love osx...and hate macs

My pc runs tiger just fine thank you now please let me legally run it....I mean you will let me buy a license but not allow me to use it ....well I will anyway until you find out :P

you think they would learn from MS with the vista oem license agreements...cant change computers...watch me...yup only computer its on..just give me the darn key again ty ...bye...

hey my post is almost as long as the article hmm
guess I am tired of the MS tax as everyone else.









Actually, Vista was hashed out by BillG over a few Red Bull-fueled weekend coding sessions. Microsoft is the very antithesis of a committee-based corporate culture, and shame on you for suggesting otherwise.

Seriously, you believe MS would spend 44 billion as a Silverlight deployment mechanism? I suppose the moon landing was faked too?

Microsoft want Yahoo for one main reason. Brand. MS will never shake the 'bill gates' image with un-cool names like 'Live' and 'Vista'. Names like Google and Yahoo (and dare I say Apple) are seen by regular people as non-IT and cool. MS buying Yahoo gives it a brand that is well recognised, with the added bonus of a large and loyal user base, many who don't care who ones them. Remember when hotmail wasn't owned by MS? Don't think too many people jumped ship because MS owned them. Most people jumped ship because Google were more inventive, creative and 'cooler'. Had MS come along with a nicer GUI a few years ago the story would have been completely different.

As GGombos said, MS could roll out Silverlight through windows update, then wrap 'Live' and Messenger in it and bang. Instand Silverlight user base. I'm sure it'll happen one day.

And to say microsoft can't make decent software, look beyond the desktop. Visual studio and SQl 2005 may not be perfect but most developers on those platforms 'love' (for want of a better word) them, especially compared with older versions.

I would also guess you'd be the person having a go at MS for not changing the IE interface for so long (until version 7). You are probably the same person giving them grief for changing the UI in Vista and Office.

At the end of the day, who cares?

I would probably be running Linux by now. 

To be honest, it just makes it seem like someone who works for MS now stole your sweets when you were at school. MS are a business, and like all businesses, they drive for profit. That's the way the capitalist world works.

How come Microsoft have a monopoly in the first place? Because they actually made some very good products. Yes Vista is a stinking pile of dogs faeces, but that doesn't mean that every bit of software they ever wrote was evil. Far from it - it just means they dropped the ball. In the dark. And forgot their torch.

If someone made a Linux distro that was as customer focused as MS operating systems in the past have been, then they would start to make some money. But really all I see is a lot of thinly veiled unintelligible commands.

And as for developer tools - MS does a really good job there. Visual Studio 2005 is the nuts.

SQL Server - very good bit of software.

Office - there's a reason that so many people use it.

Maybe it's time to write a book... 'the corporations are evil man'. Include a spliff with each copy. Then you'll have $44 billion of your own. Or not.

Years ago, a good friend said he didn't hate MS, he just wanted to have them play fair. Now, I think he feels as you do. 
I'd trust Bush/Cheney to leave not embrace waterboarding, sooner than I'd trust MS to play fairly!
The comments about IT folks developing a deep dislike ring true to me. Even the most ardent MS supporters I know, who have been making a living relying on their software, have been grumbling over the last year. 
However, given the size of the organization, and given that, "an object in motion tends to stay in motion," I think it will take longer for MS to implode.
What they should do is go the Apple route, and use BSD as their base, and then build good software on top of that.

You're spot on in regards to the tech-savvy population. Unfortunately, the world is mostly populated by people who frequently cause PEBKAC errors. These people don't know enough to know they should hate Microsoft and quite happily take anything that's shoved down their throats. That's why the security hole known as IE isn't dead and why the least stable OS family available is still on most computers. Much as I'd like to see Microsoft die tomorrow, they're not going anywhere soon.

Cynical folks have grown accustomed to tolerating the removal of rights and freedoms by big corporations, most notably Microsoft and its pervasive and insidious tentacles wrapped though the IT industry which allows us to communicate. 

However, there comes a tipping point, a point where public indignation reaches a threshold, irrevocably bursting the floodgates of change and adoption of other existing technologies (such as Linux and open source, open standards) which are customer-centric, as opposed to the toxic corporate-centric values reflected in all aspects of Microsoft corporate behaviour. 

The dam has burst, and all the money in the world is insignificant compared to the forces of nature involved here. I, like so many, am disgusted with all of Microsoft's ideals and business practices, and will be glad to see them go. I, like Charlie, could suggest some solutions, but I do not trust them, and so will remain silent and watch the fun.

NBC is broadcasting the Olympics on Silverlight. Billions will install it. Game over. MS doesn't need Yahoo for that. Nice rant, though.

I have always loved Yahoo.
Too bad it has to be sacrificed to clean out
M$'s wallet.

Hello Google !!!!!

Vista is probably designed by a committee.

Charlie,

I hope you are right that Microsoft is on a downward path and soon will be irrelevant.

At the moment, I don't see enough to convince me that it is true, but I hope you are right.

If Microsoft wants to waste $44billion just to promote a "me too" bit of software, why not waste only $20billion by buying Adobe and phasing out Flash?

I think this is bang on target, MS can't use Yahoo's technology, they are not interested in any of it. They basically want their users, so they ram more MS crapware down their throats. They wouldn't mind keeping some of the Yahoo developers and 3rd part friends but that's not their top goal.

MS buying Yahoo is an utter waste of time. Smart Yahoo shareholders will buy Google shares instead an laugh all the way to the bank as MS/Yahoo sinks without trace.

Completely off the mark, as usual with Charlie's anti-Microsoft rantings of late. All Microsoft would have to do is push Silverlight through Windows Update and they could save $44 bilion.

Even though I do agree (to a point) with all the rest..... in my most humble opinion, Office 2k7 isn't that bad..... I actually like it more than its older bros.
Please bear with an old mainframe fart, but being used to ISPF and CA-Roscoe, I do like the flair and the shiny colored buttons in the new office....