nun
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2006
- Messages
- 4,872
I ordered a Mac Air. I will put MS Office Pro on it, but will probably browse with Safari.
Have you thought about OpenOffice? It works great on my Mac.
I ordered a Mac Air. I will put MS Office Pro on it, but will probably browse with Safari.
MS bought DOS because it was the only way to seize upon an IBM blunder that gave MS the keys to the kingdom. They had the talent to build an operating system, but they needed one Right Now!Microsoft isn't an innovation company; they bought DOS and the Windows interface wasn't original.
MS bought DOS because it was the only way to seize upon an IBM blunder that gave MS the keys to the kingdom. They had the talent to build an operating system, but they needed one Right Now!
Like Jobs, Gates visited Zerox PARC to see the future, which included a working graphical user interface. Jobs got it and built very expensive, very slow computers that almost killed the company. Gates got it and knew the CPUs available in the next few years wouldn't have the power for a graphical interface.
Last weekend at a dinner party someone said: "What has Microsoft done in the past 10 years?" We really couldn't think of anything innovative.
But a tripling of revenue and almost a tripling of profits in decade is hardly going no where. I think it is almost impossible to be the "It" company for an extended period of time. Microsoft had 15 years as the top dog not a bad run. Comparing them to Apple is a bit unfair since they are clearly the most successful company in our lifetimes.
People need to realize that Microsoft is not a consumer company (outside of Xbox). Their earnings are driven by the corporate market.
Large companies give almost all of their corporate employees a laptop with Windows and Office on it. Increasingly, they run their e-mail on an Exchange Platform. Their servers are running Microsoft Server as an OS and SQL as a database platform. The same companies are rolling out Lync and Sharepoint installations as well.
Unless Corporate America decides to move away from Microsoft, Microsoft will continue to make massive amounts of money. I see no indication that the typical company is considering reducing their dependence on Microsoft products. If anything it is increasing.
The home PC market can wither away and I don't think it makes Microsoft a bad investment at this price.
People need to realize that Microsoft is not a consumer company (outside of Xbox). Their earnings are driven by the corporate market.
All in all, I don't think its crazy at all for Microsoft to make consumer facing investments as the world moves away from mouse & keyboard based computing, its just that their track record for anything other than Windows, Office, and Servers is quite poor, and in fact, has lost money. Not a good sign.
I mostly agree with that statement, but don't forget the success of the Xbox, which generally has been considered a very successful product for Microsoft, and is clearly a retail consumer product.
exactly, they have become IBM, nothing wrong with that as long as they know it and don't waste resources trying to compete with Google, Amazon and Apple. They are so far behind on the publishing and music side of things they might as well give up on regular consumers and concentrate on the corporate world. Of course they have stiff competition there too with the growth of Linux and all the Unix flavors.
Seriously, though, I think Microsoft is clearly worried about the sustainability of the Windows and Office businesses in a "post-PC" world. They are already seeing it happen in the consumer space. I think you can arguably say that the consumer computing business has definitely moved beyond the PC, where handheld devices take an increasingly significant, if not central role in the consumer's computing lives. It's less clear what the "post-PC" world means to businesses. I'm sure Apple hopes that businesses will increasingly turn to iPhones and iPads with mission critical business apps, rather than just a PC on every desk.
I've been amazed at the money they've wasted on the online division.
It seems like it should be obvious by now that Bing will never be successful, but they keep dumping money into it.
I was just glad that the Yahoo purchase fell through. That was a really bad idea.
I believe his point was that MS can compete in consumer electronics. That it is a tiny fraction of their profits shows why they haven't paid much attention to that market....but Xbox is a tiny fraction of MS profitability.
Is their model of total control over a tightly integrated system of software, computers, consumer electronics, media sources and the cloud now a mature one that will be widely copied?
Their owners believed the marketing and thought they were hip, slick and cool.