Ballmer bets on R&D amidst Meltdown Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer wants to spend research and development dollars like it was the 1930s-era Great Depression. The volume control-impaired CEO told investors at its annual mid-year chat that Microsoft intends to stuff the company's R&D larders in anticipation for when economic conditions aren't quite so dire. But he …
Soooo $500 for the server, then $500 for a windows OS that I have to boot once, twice, three times a week... or Vmware ESXi w/ many many many copies of linux on it running 24/7 for a year w/o a reboot.. Which I pay $0 extra for... hmmm.. thats a tough one, and really tough when everyone has sooo much extra cash sittin around to spend on software ;) and less performing software at that..
I was getting quite fed-up with all these adjectives (and I am no SB or MS fan at all), but after listening to (part of) his speech, I have to concur with the author's use of same.
Listening to the speech was a mission in itself: FireFox wanted to install a plug-in, but could not find anything suitable. I then fired up Opera, which just did nothing and sat there, staring at me. Then it dawned on me that maybe, since this is a Microsoft site, it would use MS-only technology.
Lo and behold! After firing up the missus' Vista machine, FireFox wanted to install a WMP 11 plug-in, so eventually I was forced to open up IE and only then could I manage to listen to all er... most of the bellowing, hollering, shouting and yelling (until I gave up).
Maybe a warning to non-Windows users is in order?
Lastly - the irony of advertising a link to the ten best noise-isolating earphones was priceless! (But would it cut out the noise coming from within??).
You know, about not being too worried about losing money while they have so much of it and everyone is losing money, but to focus on positioning for when the market next goes up.
However, I can't help thinking that the Windows 7 for netbooks line explains why they've gone to so much effort to push Windows XP onto netbook producers now. Consumers already associate having Windows with having a 'proper computer', now let's see what netbook manufacturers will do in a couple of years when they can either add an extra £50 to the current Windows license cost or try to switch back to Linux. Why can't they see they're busy digging their own graves?
I'm not a Microsoft fan, but he's right! In general, if everyone else in a market cuts down to no R&D, then the company or two who DO still do R&D will be ahead of everyone else, taking advantage of new research to produce new products, and more advanced versions of old products, ahead of everyone else.
In general, he's right. In specific, I don't know if the recession will cut R&D on free and open source software. But they'll have to keep it up to have a chance.
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