This is going to be the Zune of virtualization

Name one innovative Microsoft product made in the last 5 years.

Who Cares?

What does it matter? Does it work?

Personally, I don't care who is more innovative, as long as their product gets the job done. Don't get me wrong, VMWare has a great product, but a little competition is good as well.

I know it's fun to bash MS, and it's the cool thing to do these days, but man it's getting old.

I agree...

I agree entirely with what the Anon said above. Microsoft does innovate well, they spend a lot of time and money on innovation. They may not get it right every time, but they do try.

Even as primarily a Mac user, I think most of Apples so called innovations are quite lame, some of them to the point of stupid. It just bores me to be honest.

Why can't people just accept the good that all companies do in the market, instead of being fanboys for illogical, idiotic reasons?

Bah...............

Original anon here

1. Windows Home Server is basically Novell NetWare from the early 1990s with slightly reduced functionality.

2. Windows Media Center is from 2001, so not within the last 5 years, but are you claiming Microsoft invented television on a PC or what?

3. Tablet PC was created by some other company and only *popularized* by Microsoft. This is precisely what I'm talking about: they don't innovate by themselves, only buy out other companies, license from them or simply "popularize."

I'll stop now because it can go on like that forever and I'm not a fanboy of any kind.

But I wonder what's next on your list of MS innovations? The 104-key keyboard?

In fact I couldn't care less about the whole issue, except that I know next thing they will be trying to do after they release their Super-Hyper-Uber-V will be to make Windows less compatible with VMWare, which is a superior product. And that makes me a sad panda.

The only true MS innovation

@ first AC

that's easy (and ubiquitous).

multi-billion-dollar marketing, complete with bloggers and astroturfing (some to be found on these forums, see Webster Phreaky); coupled with bullying and monopoly tactics (see Groklaw's Jihad documents from MS marketing); topped off with hordes of lobbyists and massive political campaign contributions to buy off governments and standards organizations (OASIS, anyone?).

now, that's what we in the US call REAL INNOVATION (well, some of us call it "lying", and the courts call it "illegal monopoly", but never mind). the academic establishment (MIT, UCBerkeley, etc.), the national labs (Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, etc.), Intel, AMD, Apple, Sun, Xerox, IBM, the open-source movement, etc. - none of them can hold a candle to MS innovation, because they focus on quality, technology and products, which are quite beside the point.

TRUE US INNOVATION is brilliant, aggressive, ethics-free marketing. that's what enables a company to sell buggy, badly designed and executed products, and then sell upgrades to those products, profitably, year after year.

pirate icon perfectly appropriate.

Lets just say it now

You buy into this.. Dont cry afterwards. There is not one NEW M$ product at the moment bug free! NOT ONE! Expect BUGS and not some simple ones .. BIG FAT JUICY ONES what will cost your 3 times the value any other non buggy ones.