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Bill's billions dwindle in Q1
POOR BILL GATES will soon be searching down the back of the sofa for quarters for the gas meter if Microsoft's current figures are anything to go by.
First quarter profits this year are down by 11 per cent to a wallet-worrying $4.39 billion compared to $4.93 billion the previous year.
The biggest blow was to the business applications division which saw sales of Office and other productivity programmes threatened by the likes of Google Docs, which had the audacity to give away stuff for free.
But a whince-inducing fine of $1.42 billion failed to make much of a dent in the Redmond firm's bottom line, mainly because it's happy to pass the costs of its legal indiscretions along the line to you, the consumer.
X-Box sales remained strong and helped the company's entertainment and devices sector grow by 68 per cent.
Predictions for the rest of the year are still strong, but after-hours trading following the announcement of the figures contributed to a five per cent drop in the company's value overnight. ยต
L'Inq
Beeb
Tags: Microsoft
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Monoposoft has made such a bad name for itself - forcing Vista on those who do not want it, being repeatedly fined for anticompetitive business practices, bribing people to force OOXML though ISO, exposing customers' data to theft and damage via viruses, trojans, bots, etc, stiffing all those who bought it's ironically-named *plays for sure* DRM-tunes - that people in all countries (including governments) are considering ditching the corrupt and untrustworthy company. Even Yahoo does not want their name sullied by association with MS, even for $44B. I don't blame them.

So the solution to this confusion is dissolution: dissolve the company, get rid of that now-obnoxious name, and make something non-critical...like MegaStiff (TM) Xbox360's (oh, and try to get the failure rate below 30%).
The biggest blow is not coming from Google Docs. No one realy likes the online services as most articles would like to make you believe that they do.

The ones using Google docs are the ones with NO capitol to draw from.

The biggest blow is coming from Open Office. This is a great product and also a perfect clone to Office 2003 which by the way is what most people want.

Microsoft no longer offers Office 2003 and that is what is sinking Office sales.

No one wants Office 2007 with it's ribbon feature. Microsoft sure was dumb on this also. (hint -Vista) They could of had the ribbon feature as a plus, but leave the availabilty of the old fashion menu as well as well as the file format.

Open Office is a great alternative and best of all it is free. Google docs fancies some people, but businesses want their stuff local. Even the app must be local because they just do not trust the internet and you cannot blame them. I don't.

If your internet is down, then your company is also down. What kind of setup is that. Just because bandwith is there and it is doable does not mean that it is practical.

This is proof that microsoft's walet is only semi-infinite, AKA finite.