Microsoft: Profit DECIMATED because you people aren't buying PCs Microsoft has weathered a difficult three months: despite signs of growth in cloud computing, overall sales were dragged down by dwindling demand from consumers. Revenues of $21.73bn in Microsoft's third quarter of fiscal 2015, ended March 31, met analysts' expectations. However, sustainable growth still eludes the software …
Is also the advantage of buying in some parts of Europe if you don't want Windows. Off the shelf branded pc hardware is often only available with FreeDos or comes with 2 skus one for FreeDos and one for Windows.
Unfortunately for us here in Blighty the reverse is true and trying to find a system without building it yourself or going the barebones route usually means it's coming with Windows.
Software and O/S upgrades have a cost far beyond their replacement. Current software is often incompatible. For instance AutoDesk's $7500 2010 software that runs on Win XP does not run on Windows 7 and up. So if you upgrade Autodesk to run on Win 8 then ACAD will not run on Win 10. Many Engineering firms are still using XP for this very reason. Savvy IT techs are upgrading the hardware around imaged drives. The only fly in that oinment is if a socket becomes obsolete or the motherboards are discontinued and bios updates are no longer available. Still that can get a workstation 5-7 years of usefull life. PC sales are in decline due to the necessary extension of system lifecycle. And this is at odds with the industry. IT departments are actually performing mechanical maintenance on workstations by periodic vacuuming and dust removal as well as replacing fans and heatsink compounds.
Then there is the whole licensing issue. AutoDesk does not like it when you try to move licenses from an old machine to a new. Corporate accounting software is even worse for proprietary or custome software never mind the HR and IT issues etc.
The artificially planned obsolescence of hardware and software is becoming too expensive to continue.
Even now, the upcoming Windows 10 release has slowed the sales of gaming pc's and laptops as why purchase DX11.3 hardware when DX12 is promising to be "game changing"?
The Ribbon, Windows 8, Tiles, Clouding everything, Homegroups, Libraries.
I hate it all.
It is the story of life though isn't it.
1. Company becomes uber success, and government then demands they employ care in the community types.
2. They then outnumber the techies who build it, and by weight of numbers demand a say.
The same has happened in government.
The health service doctors are managed by secretaries.
People with IQs of 160 and degrees in engineering build Hawker Harriers which are given away by people who have IQs of 90 and degrees in History.
Lions led by donkeys.
The mistake was to allow predominantly female and metrosexual sales staff direct product development.
I won't buy windows 10 either. I don't want my data on someone else's server, and I want to buy a product, not rent it. You rent anything that flies, floats or f**ks. Everything else, you buy.
Never understood degrees with 10,000 word essays.
Why give marks for pontificating in documents?
Why not award for brevity which covers all salient points?
If "Look at Graph" with the correct references and graphics does the job then shouldn't the university reward the student for saving the markers time & effort while stripping back the subject and demonstrating a clear, concise understanding of the topic?
Totally couldn't be because they've had two major flop operating systems in the last 10 years or anything. They've released the auditors like crazy to try and make up for the gap in the earnings too. Office keeps expanding with products no one uses but doesn't really improve the ones they have. Their own products don't even work well with each other (version and features of SQL with various OS'). Azure's ok, but it's not any more special than any other cloud. They need to refocus efforts on improving their current product base and making them top-notch before they stretch out any more.
"if they didn't include their Android patent extortion racket in that number."
We know Microsoft claim over 200 patents are infringed by Android. It's hardly extortion with that level of IP involved. FYI - most Android manufacturers also have to license IP from Nokia, Qualcomm, and several others too.
Even if some patents were invalid or obvious, out of 200+ some will stick. Hence why multi billion dollar companies that normally fight IP cases are all rolling over and paying up. If there was any reasonable doubt at all, they would fight...
people are getting smarter and buying macs! windows is trash! nothing but problems and slow as hell! be smarter and buy a mac! no registry problems, no viruses, no paying for protection for windows, no hacking and you can go anywhere a windows computer can with nothing but speed and power! i will never buy windows trash again!
"be smarter and buy a mac! no registry problems, no viruses, no paying for protection for windows, no hacking"
No software, no games, no drivers, no flexibility compared to Windows....For lots more money.
Can't remember ever seeing a PC with "Registry problems". Macs do have malware, and are potentially far more vulnerable to remote hacking that Windows is. OS-X is now on well over 2,000 known vulnerabilities - that's about 3 times a comparably aged Windows version....
"The Computing and Gaming Hardware division's revenue sank 8.8 per cent from the year-ago"
Microsoft (MS) Flight Simulator (FS) broke new ground with each release, improved with each new release, and garnered millions of fans along the way. It might be said FS was the first desktop simulator. It might also be said it was the only MS product buyers users actually *liked*.
And then, a decade ago...pooof...FS disappeared. Ten years later it can be said FS still leads the market. Ten years later there's a thriving industry of add-ons for FS. In my opinion, at least, FlightX still has a long way to go to catch up to FSX Gold Acceration.
Could retention of FS maintained revenue for Microsoft's gaming division?
I could not unerstand and think I shall never understand why Microsoft ditched FS.
All you Microsoft-doubters, crawl back into your caves, because Microsoft is poised for a techno-comeback.
Yes, the rumors are true, Solitaire is Coming Back for Windows 10.
This will be followed by Solitaire - Azure Edition which is a subscription-based version which is played across an RDP connection.
We're living in the future, now, people!
Still no classic shell in Windows 10 preview. What if people don't care about touch features and we want to run a lean gui for speed? I guess it flies in the face of bloated programming. Just give us the option to do what we want. 3rd party apps are great, but it would be even better to install less on your pc and get more performance. My Windows 8.1 laptop works well enough, but it's definitely running like a pig. Hardware is so good now even a cheap hardware is overkill for Windows as opposed to the 90's where every little bit helped. Why not give us a choice to run lean and allow disabling features so all the dependancies are disabled?
We're not buying PCs because a few years ago PC performance went past what regular people could really make use of. PCs are commodity items and there isn't any overwhelming reason to buy a new one. Most especially, there's no reason to try to get used to a new GUI paradigm and try to figure out where stuff has been moved to.
Back when the computer industry was changing rapidly, there was a reason to keep current. There is no longer a reason to do so.
The later versions of Windows are killing PC sales. I ran Windows 98 on a modern computer and the result was so snappy it was simply a joy. I guess they are locked into a feature excalation psychology where they think they have to keep adding features to drive sales and justify the cost of an upgrade.
In fact users want the OS to be unobtrusive and for it to appear to be doing as little as possible.
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