Microsoft revenue beats quarterly estimates

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Be more flexible in your thinking.

You're putting a negative spin on what could be advantages.
When you say
"too many overnight MCSE's"
I think
staff are not as expensive as more trained and experienced people.

When you say
"Redmond graduates weened on 'cut and paste' engineering"
I think
capable of easy setup and use, able to grow with an expanding small business without major consulting fees.

When you say
"... Microsoft's crooked ways of locking people into an extremely insecure system"
I think
provides features available nowhere else that are used productively
and
if SP 2 is even moderately successful, it will allay a definite worry, be a real improvement encouraging an upgrade to XP.

When you say
"... designed for Grandma to operate."
I think
the home market is a lock for Microsoft.

When you say
"... corporations should wake up and realise that they shouldn't have all that 'functionality' that hurts worker productivity by distracting them from productivity."
I think
there's a Biblical saying: do not muzzle the ox, especially when threshing out the grain. Means if the ox wants to eat a mouthful of grain, don't be pusillanimous; let him.
If what's available to workers is more than needed, as shown by a study, it's a gesture of trust and at worst a momentary distraction. If someone can't work responsibly, using excess software functions is only one among the possible ways that will become apparent and then dealt with.
Plus, there's a possibility an inventive employee will find some honest uses for the functions.


In short (I know; too late), you haven't identified Microsoft's real weaknesses.
There are weaknesses which a well funded competitor would be able to exploit. But to find them, you'd have to step outside the way to think of software you indicate here, and look at what the user wants.
The simplest guide to looking for weaknesses is: Microsoft wants to do too much, and is not as concerned that the functions be obvious to the worker and efficiently used as they should be.

Give you the smallest possible example. Know how to hide a cell in Excel? That should be an upfront option. It's not.
Another example: some bugs have been carried forward version after version.
Microsoft gets the big picture; it's the tiny snapshots that make them vulnerable.

Posted by: Anton Philidor   Posted on: 07/22/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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