MS rushes out new unfinished OS. Said OS is so crappy that only a handful of MS fabuoys buys it. MS pushes harder, forces its retailers to sell it. Two major US MS retailers go titsup. MS lays off staff, with its only good result being a non-Vista segment. Ballmer:"don't you dare think it's the Vista backlash". Yeah, right Steevie. Put that chair down now.

When you look at what Microsoft did in the last year I am actually surprised the loss are not bigger:

Faillures:

- PC OS: Vista is a complete failure that doesn't match with consumer expectations and is overpriced.

- Netbooks: The only way MS got market share in the segment is by practically giving XP away, and even then Nebooks on XP seems to perform worse than the ones under Linux (even if they sell better to the uninformed masses).

- Mobile: outside of the enterprise Windows mobile is absolutely nowhere compared to the iPhone, Android and WebOS

- PC Gaming: The live service got an awful reputation by being a service you have to pay when all other services were free (fixed since, but still..). The absence of DirectX 10 on XP made the market technologically stagnant as most gamers are still on XP (because some games require twice the hardware on Vista vs XP).

- Online Strategy: being destroyed by google.

- Zune: When do you want your music player to be bricked?

Succeses:

The only MS product that I found interesting last year was the XBOX 360: nice new price point, new dashboard etc...

In short, Microsoft did very little to interest the average consumer in its product last year, no wonder that demand is slowing down.

Hmmmm, sounds like what happened to PC's which downgraded to Vista

Just imagine what a state they'd be in if they'd bought yahoo!!!

Microsoft has dropped the ball with gamers. Just look at the highstreet. Game, HMV, etc. and look at the PC games section. Its diabolical and good indication of whats around the corner. Microsoft should be forcing the game devs to make a pc version of all 360 games. As soon as the PC is percieved to be poor for gaming that will be it for a thousands of jobs. NV and ATI will have no-one buying top end gfx cards. No one will NEED to buy the next version of Windows for the latest DX??.

I love my PC and resolutely refuse to swap over to the 360 to get my gaming fix as have soooo many people I know. MS should just drop the XBOX, its just a massive whole in the pocket anyway, and concentrate those of us who prefer to do things properly.

Windows 7 maybe the light at the end of the tunnel.

Well, I have used Vista. It's horrid. On the few occasions I have to pull that horrid abomination out from under the pile of paper (right beside that macbook) where it belongs, I am amazed ever time at how unrelentingly terrible it is.

Vista's Shell is a shrieking horror trapped in the nether planes between a (mostly) useable interface such as XP/Gnome and the developer-driven (and focused) unusability that is KDE 4. Someone took a left turn at the hallway marked "metaphor for information usage and retrieval" and went skipping off into some mental island of Dr Moreau to breed this mutant catastrophe.

I am not sure what cerebral dysfunction seems to have crept into the once sane mind of modern GUI developers, but they left raw functionality behind. Many, (if not most!) users don't care about flashy bling, or a spinny box, we don't care about a transparent window, or your new idea on how the desktop of file explorer "should" be used. We care about using the TOOLS we have in front of us to accomplish the tasks we need to accomplish with the minimum of fuss, bother, and thought. We should be focused on the task at hand, not how to beat our computer into submission long enough that it will obey. The arrogant assumption by those peddling this trash to the world that we will all of retrain and relearn everything we know (and that has by now become instinctual,) every few years is beyond asinine.

Vista's bastard explorer shell and its terrible network file bug can both die in the most horrible way possible, please and thank you. That whole "ribbon bar" bull can eat 10,000 piles of dung. The KDE developers can get off their elitist towers and let me use my damned desktop the way I have used it for 15 years, and I don't give a rat's arse how much "better" you think your "containers" crap is. Windows 7 and Apple OSX can take their "dock" idea and shove it somewhere highly unpleasant.

The next person who tries to convince me hiding standard frequently accessed panels and information (like my network settings!) behind a half dozen more mouse clicks, and a shag rug’s worth of obfuscation, please do us all a favor, and don’t procreate. That kind of blind faith in the face of unerring stupidity shouldn’t be passed on.

I'm not against innovations in the GUI, but I am against "innovations" that cost me time, or worse yet, flat out don't work. (Vista Explorer/Shell, I'm looking at you.) The bling, and the whiz-bang, well, sell it to the easily amused, but by the gods, let us at least turn that wasteful crap off.

So have to use Vista? Yes, it's terrible, and so are the interfaces for most of the new GUIs. Somewhere, the devs left behind the realization that the vast majority of PCs are used by businesses or "prosumers" who care far, far more about a stable PC that runs the software they need, works with the devices they want, is fast, and lives for at least 5 years before becoming obsolete. We don't use them to be entertained by a goddamn transparency. (In other words: until they develop a far more business oriented interface, they can pry XP and Gnome from my cold, dead hands.)

This isn’t about what the developers think is best. Piss on the developers. If they want to introduce a new metaphor for dealing with information, good on them, but leave us the choice of dealing with things as we are used to. “Close enough” simply isn’t. The problem isn’t new things, it’s removing the CHOICE. Like taking away my Up arrow, or not allowing me to nuke the ribbon, and use a bloody menu instead. (Or drag things on to my KDE desktop, and have them behave properly!)

The argument stands: If you don’t like it don’t buy it/use it.

Well people the world over didn’t, AND IT BLOODY WELL SHOWS.

Thank you, and have an excellent weekend.

I have used Vista, and still do when I have some time to waste. My opinion is it's a ressource hog for no good reason.

It's irrelevant anyway. They released Vista unfinished, no-one wanted it, they pushed it like crazy and it now bites them in the ass.