When is the last time you heard people talk about Microsoft?
For your tech PING list.
That's not at all what happened.
What happened was Bill Gates wasn't making political donations, and the Democrats dragged him in by the short hairs and taught him the error of his ways.
Now the Democrats are the happy recipients of Bill's beneficence, and all his anti-trust problems have gone away.
Android is now a full OS?
The Microsoft haters are really losing it. Next thing you know they will count IPod touches as PCs.
...what has really destroyed Microsoft’s choke hold on the global personal computing market over the past 15 years hasn’t been a legal threat but the fact that it SUCKS!!!
Not so fast. Microsoft continues to post billions of dollars in revenues and profit year after year. The MS Office division alone will be a cash cow for many more years to come. I personally subscribe to the Office 365 product and that is a fantastic deal. I get to put Office on up to five of my PCs, devices - or Macs.
Microsoft may not be getting all the attention they used to get but they are a very powerful corporation that continues to print money. If you are a shareholder, I would stay put and reap the dividends.
Hmmm...in the past 15 years I have (privately) spent on MS products...$50 for a WinXP Pro license via ebay. Granted, my firm spent/spends somewhat more for the newer OS, MS Office etc. But in the home PC sector? Who needs MS anymore?
Henry Blodget-—HAHAHAHA. I guess being charged with civil securities fraud does not prevent you from being the CEO of a crap internet business “news” site.
This is where I think a lot of people miss the point. In my case I buy the hardware to run the software, which means I have two XP machines for general use - Internet, basic photo editing and display, basic Audio apps, a win7 box with enough horsepower to do video editing and run some big music samplers, an old winbook xp portable, an Asus TF101 Android tablet - I find I use it mostly for games & surfing on the porch and my iPad which I most highly recommend as having loads of very reasonably priced music apps that in a lot of cases are nothing short of mindboggeling.
While I haven't pulled the plug yet, I find that there some apps that run exclusively on Linux and OSX that look interesting, so no more windows boxes for me in the foreseeable future.
If you care to search my closets you will find a hand-full of gear from the last century, Amigas, an Apple II and even an old CPM-80 machine, all retired now. I still manage to use a few pieces of software from that era as well.
I think folks are missing the two truly distinct markets: business and personal use. MS still owns the business end of things. Not many Fortune 500 companies (or the fedgov, for that matter) are trading their PCs for tablets anytime soon.
For personal use, yes. PCs are going the way of the console stereo.