Is Microsoft Good for Consumers and Businesses?

[Narmer]

The computer industry is a very competitive industry with a lot of highly intelligent people. Yet Microsoft has managed to stay competitive for so long. I could be wrong but I believe the reason is they've used everything in their arsenal (from lawsuits to innovation) to stay ahead of their competition. The ones that consumers (of their products) see are the innovations. I remember 10 years ago people were saying Microsoft was evil and such. Now, I don't hear it anymore. And their products are very good considering all the different people they have to cater to. Even though they've been king of the hill for so long, the company still has an extremely competitive and innovative spirit. You can see this with their Xbox Live service.

Of course if it wasn't for the government and it's competitors they wouldn't have the incentives to do these things. But most king of the hills wither away and let someone eat their lunch. I'm surprised that this company has managed to re-invent itself so many times. If anything, Microsoft should be a case-study on how to stay alive in a vicious market.

 

[mugs]

I think Microsoft is making much better products than they made 10 years ago.

 

[Kaido]

The computer industry would not be where it is now without Microsoft. Even Linux would not be where it is (or perhaps exist, even) without Microsoft. From what I've learned about computer history, the two major consumer/business machine players were Apple (Steve Jobs) and Microsoft (Bill Gates). Jobs had a good product and chose to invest in making it a great product. Gates swiped Job's idea and rather than choosing to invest in making it a great product, he sunk his money into marketing. Gates made himself the default with an admittedly poor product. Given enough time in the market to grow and to improve on their product, the latest releases (2000, XP, Vista) have been pretty decent. Honestly, a properly configured XP machine is nearly as stable as OS X or Linux (well, OS X at least). The only difference is that OS X comes out of the box that way. Most pre-configured computers like Dell come with tons of crapware on them which slow down your exist $299 256mb machine. Also Microsoft doesn't control their own hardware like Apple does, lending themselves to more instability due to poor driver/software programming. However with things like driver signing, it's starting to get better.

The Xbox has been a great machine. Today's Xbox 360 is yesterday's Playstation 2 - everybody has one! The 360 is my favorite console to game on (not counting the PC!). And what kind of computers are most of the games made for? Windows. As far as their hardware goes, Microsoft hardware has been some of the best stuff I've ever had, from wireless cards to wireless keyboards. Like you said, they are to the point where they are the industry king, but rather than letting that "wither away", Gates has been a shrewd businessman and has kept things rolling. I am by no means a fan of Bill Gates, but props to him for doing what he has done.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Without competition, someone else would just be Microsoft.

- M4H

 

[Chryso]

They are still evil.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
Without competition, someone else would just be Microsoft.

- M4H

MercenarySoft?

 

[So]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
Without competition, someone else would just be Microsoft.

- M4H

MercenarySoft?

SoSoft.

 

[vi edit]

Call me a fanboy, but there simply is not a better full circle suite of products that offer the ease of use, ease of administration, and data collaberation abilities that MS products do.

 

[BigJ]

Originally posted by: Kaido
The Xbox has been a great machine. Today's Xbox 360 is yesterday's Playstation 2 - everybody has one!

The 360 still has a long way to go. The PS2 has sold ~100million consoles to date, and is still selling very strongly. I believe at the end of 2006, they had only sold 10mill 360s.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: mugs
I think Microsoft is making much better products than they made 10 years ago.

I can agree with that. I think part of Microsoft's problem is that they want to control too many things without having enough focus in each area. They excel in certain areas (like the Xbox) while doing pretty poorly in others (Zune anyone?). I was just reading an article on DailyTech where Gates was talking about Vista and how students will be using tablets instead of textbooks. I can see that happening someday, but why not now? They've been talking about that for the last 20 years. I think Microsoft could have a very strong presence in many people's personal lives if they really tried.

Originally posted by: Chryso
They are still evil.

I think that's one of the reasons Mac geeks are such zealot (myself included!). Steve Jobs panders to the needs of the individual - things look nice and they're easy to use. Bill Gates "forces" you to use his stuff because it's standard.

Going back to what I was saying above, I believe that Microsoft could have a much stronger consumer presence if they (had) tried a little harder to focus on the consumer's point of view. Look at Apple - everyone has an iPod. And a cell phone. And a computers. There's no reason why Microsoft couldn't have taken these things by storm, but they seem to be missing the boat on consumerism.

Just throwing out some ideas here - a quality tablet PC for every student to read and learn on. A Microsoft iPhone handles music, cell phone/VOIP, and PDA functions, or an iPhone Nano for those of us who don't need/want PDA functionality. Can you just imagine how much nicer life would be if everything really worked together properly? A portable computer that does everything and a portable phone device that handles voice communication, text messaging/email, GPS, point-and-shoot camera, etc., would be all you really need to carry around with you anywhere you go. Television could be wrapped up in the Xbox 360 using IPTV and TiVo-like functionality, plus an online version of Netflix where you could download the movie for renting on your console...same with phones, VOIP over the Internet.

Gah, Google/Microsoft/Apple needs to merge and run my life

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: vi_edit
Call me a fanboy, but there simply is not a better full circle suite of products that offer the ease of use, ease of administration, and data collaberation abilities that MS products do.

I wouldn't say that's fanboyism, that's just plain truth - Microsoft does a million different things and so they have the best "full circle suite" of products available. I think they're suffering from some bloat though, like Adobe Acrobat. Acrobat has become the fattest, most bloated piece of software every because they're a business and they have to release a new product with new features every year. It takes like 5 minutes for the thing to load up and open a PDF when browsing the Internet on my computer. If you go and download an alternative like Foxit Reader, it's zoom zoom zoom - no bloat!

I switched my company over to Thunderbird last year and people are loving it. There are a few features they miss (like calendar), but nothing that can't be solved by installing a companion program. I think that Microsoft now needs to focus on making their applications more user-friendly so that people can and will actually use them. I was impressed by the Office 2007 redesign - people say it's the same old Office app with a new GUI (well duh, what more can you add to a word processing program?), but I think it's a big change...it's so much easier to access things because they are grouped by easy-to-use menus that your average user doesn't have much trouble using anymore. For me, it's all about the end-user experience and then the program actually doing what it's designed to do. That's why I like Macs a lot - simple, pretty, straightforward, and does what you want it to do. Unfortunately they don't have the broadest range of applications at the moment, nor do I think they will ever take over the marketplace completely because Microsoft has done a good job embedding themselves in it.

 

[Chryso]

Originally posted by: Kaido

I think that's one of the reasons Mac geeks are such zealot (myself included!). Steve Jobs panders to the needs of the individual - things look nice and they're easy to use. Bill Gates "forces" you to use his stuff because it's standard.

It isn't even necessarily standard. Microsoft will create their own new standards, not tell anybody how they work, and try to force people to use them rather than go with an industry standard. Take microsoft virtual machine for example.

Back about 10-12 years ago my office was an OS/2 shop. OS/2 had a nice windows emulation mode that was actually more stable than windows was. This was back in the days when you still used .ini files instead of the registry. We started using some of the office suite products like word and excel. I was a programmer but was kind of new to spreadsheets so I wanted to see what kind of stuff it could do so I tried using the tutorial. Well, the tutorial wouldn't work on my machine but everything else about excel worked perfectly so I began poking around. In the .ini file of excel I found some code for the tutorial that was checking the operating system and that code would check the operating system and if it was OS/2 to shut the tutorial down. I removed that code and then the tutorial worked perfectly. So somebody at microsoft had intentionally gone out of their way to make it so that the tutorial would not run unless the computer was running windows. That was the day I began hating microsoft.

 

[LikeLinus]

Originally posted by: BigJ

Originally posted by: Kaido
The Xbox has been a great machine. Today's Xbox 360 is yesterday's Playstation 2 - everybody has one!

The 360 still has a long way to go. The PS2 has sold ~100million consoles to date, and is still selling very strongly. I believe at the end of 2006, they had only sold 10mill 360s.

You don't have a clue what he meant, do you?

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Chryso

Originally posted by: Kaido

I think that's one of the reasons Mac geeks are such zealot (myself included!). Steve Jobs panders to the needs of the individual - things look nice and they're easy to use. Bill Gates "forces" you to use his stuff because it's standard.

It isn't even necessarily standard. Microsoft will create their own new standards, not tell anybody how they work, and try to force people to use them rather than go with an industry standard. Take microsoft virtual machine for example.

Back about 10-12 years ago my office was an OS/2 shop. OS/2 had a nice windows emulation mode that was actually more stable than windows was. This was back in the days when you still used .ini files instead of the registry. We started using some of the office suite products like word and excel. I was a programmer but was kind of new to spreadsheets so I wanted to see what kind of stuff it could do so I tried using the tutorial. Well, the tutorial wouldn't work on my machine but everything else about excel worked perfectly so I began poking around. In the .ini file of excel I found some code for the tutorial that was checking the operating system and that code would check the operating system and if it was OS/2 to shut the tutorial down. I removed that code and then the tutorial worked perfectly. So somebody at microsoft had intentionally gone out of their way to make it so that the tutorial would not run unless the computer was running windows. That was the day I began hating microsoft.

rofl...I still prefer .ini files. That's why I like Linux a lot...very scriptable I didn't know OS/2 had a Windows emulator app, that's neat! I currently use Parallels for my virtual machines and love it; I use it on both Windows and Mac. One of these days when Parallels gets good enough, I'm going to jump ship completely. Right now I run 95/98/ME/2000/XP all virtually for doing tech support, it's fantastic - I can simply boot up any OS inside a window or fullscreen and do walkthroughs just like I had a real computer with that OS right in front of me.

 

[jlmadyson]

Originally posted by: BigJ

Originally posted by: Kaido
The Xbox has been a great machine. Today's Xbox 360 is yesterday's Playstation 2 - everybody has one!

The 360 still has a long way to go. The PS2 has sold ~100million consoles to date, and is still selling very strongly. I believe at the end of 2006, they had only sold 10mill 360s.

And in a year, that ain't what I would call ****** ticket material either.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: LikeLinus

Originally posted by: BigJ

Originally posted by: Kaido
The Xbox has been a great machine. Today's Xbox 360 is yesterday's Playstation 2 - everybody has one!

The 360 still has a long way to go. The PS2 has sold ~100million consoles to date, and is still selling very strongly. I believe at the end of 2006, they had only sold 10mill 360s.

You don't have a clue what he meant, do you?

Thank you Glad you got it! Just imagine what Microsoft could do with their power...I mean really just imagine:

1. Tablet computer: Thin, long battery life, screen that is good for reading books. Digital newspaper, digital books, digital textbooks, digital art tablet, handwriting trainer, digital encyclopedia/dictionary/thesaurus, etc.

2. Home server: Store all of your multimedia, use it for backup, connect your printers and other devices to it to share easily, downloads and stores system updates.

3. All-in-one TV box: (they're getting this with the Xbox idea) Tons of channels all delivered instantly over a broadband connection, recordable like TiVo, gaming (classics and new games), high-definition movie player, TV show/Movie digital rental service.

4. Handheld device: Cell phone, VOIP phone (bettery quality when on Wifi), GPS navigation, white/yellow pages for addresses/phone numbers, music player like iPod; larger version with PDA functionality if you doing business stuff or are into personal organization

5. Smart home: Control your lights, heating, ventilation, humidity, fans, door locks, window/door sensors, garage doors, cameras, vacuum/mop/lawnmower robots, alarm clocks, schedules/routines.

And it would all work together seamlessly

 

[loup garou]

Originally posted by: Kaido
I mean really just imagine:

1. Tablet computer: Thin, long battery life, screen that is good for reading books. Digital newspaper, digital books, digital textbooks, digital art tablet, handwriting trainer, digital encyclopedia/dictionary/thesaurus, etc.

Built into Vista.

2. Home server: Store all of your multimedia, use it for backup, connect your printers and other devices to it to share easily, downloads and stores system updates.

It's called Home Server and it will be out before the end of the year.

3. All-in-one TV box: (they're getting this with the Xbox idea) Tons of channels all delivered instantly over a broadband connection, recordable like TiVo, gaming (classics and new games), high-definition movie player, TV show/Movie digital rental service.

XBox/extenders/360

4. Handheld device: Cell phone, VOIP phone (bettery quality when on Wifi), GPS navigation, white/yellow pages for addresses/phone numbers, music player like iPod; larger version with PDA functionality if you doing business stuff or are into personal organization

It's called Windows Mobile and there are zillions of phones running it now.

5. Smart home: Control your lights, heating, ventilation, humidity, fans, door locks, window/door sensors, garage doors, cameras, vacuum/mop/lawnmower robots, alarm clocks, schedules/routines.

Ok, that's one thing MS doesn't already have a consumer product available for...but there are lots of developers incorporating home automation into MediaCenter.

 

[tw1164]

Originally posted by: So

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
Without competition, someone else would just be Microsoft.

- M4H

MercenarySoft?

SoSoft.

Sounds like a toilet Paper company

 

[DaveSimmons]

Microsoft has a history of only doing good work when they feel threatened or want to take over a new market.

XP was a response to the first OS X, Vista has borrowed liberally from later versions. (No, I don't use a Mac.)

Internet Explorer was left to rot for years until Firefox started grabbing significant market share, at which point MS woke up and started making an effort again.

MS has done a pretty good job on Xbox360, but mostly because they're still playing catch-up. If they do manage to dominate over PS3 and wii then their attention will wander and it will stagnate too.

 

[Narmer]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Microsoft has a history of only doing good work when they feel threatened or want to take over a new market.

XP was a response to the first OS X, Vista has borrowed liberally from later versions. (No, I don't use a Mac.)

Internet Explorer was left to rot for years until Firefox started grabbing significant market share, at which point MS woke up and started making an effort again.

MS has done a pretty good job on Xbox360, but mostly because they're still playing catch-up. If they do manage to dominate over PS3 and wii then their attention will wander and it will stagnate too.

It's shocking (to me) that Sony saw the original Xbox Live service but didn't copy it into their PS3, instead they decided to use the ad hoc system they started in the PS2. If they're not careful, Microsoft will be eating their lunch with that XBOX that can do everything.