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Today’s news that Microsoft is writing off $6.2 billion from the useless acquisition of aQuantive in August 2007 gives me pause for thought. How bad is this company at acquisitions? Particularly those under CEO Steve Ballmer’s watch. He became CEO in January 2000. Microsoft acquired Danger in February 2008 for $500M. Small relative to …continue reading aQuantive may be Microsoft’s biggest acquisition failure. Have there been good ones? A look back. I install a ton of pre-release and test software so it is not surprising that I sometimes run into Windows Installer issues. Here is an entertaining error though. It is unlikely, I guess, that you will hit this problem; but I present it as an illustration of what can go wrong, as we move into …continue reading The application that would not uninstall Mark Russinovich works for Microsoft and has deep knowledge of Windows internals; he created the original Sysinternals tools which are invaluable for troubleshooting. His account of troubleshooting a new PC purchased by a member of his family is both amusing and depressing, though I admire his honesty: My mom recently purchased a new PC, so …continue reading OEMs are still breaking Windows: can Microsoft fix this with Windows 8? Once again people are asking why Microsoft has not allowed OEMs to build tablets running Windows Phone 7. Matthew Baxter-Reynolds says it is to do with income from OEM licenses: Now, Microsoft charges OEMs far less for Windows Phone licenses (about $15 per unit) than for full-on Windows licenses (on average, working out to about …continue reading Why there are no tablets running Windows Phone 7 I’m in Anaheim, California on the eve of Microsoft’s BUILD conference. I have heard the phrase “wait until BUILD” so many times from Microsoft over the last few months that it has given this conference a special flavour. After Wednesday, the company will have to think of another way to avoid awkward questions like what …continue reading Building Windows – when Microsoft shows its hand Recently I tried to sign into Live Messenger on Windows 7, only to be informed of what appears to be a temporary interruption in service. Show details, by the way, shows Error code: 80040154 I retried and got the same message, so I clicked the Get more information link, which took me here: …continue reading Windows Live Messenger error message hell Microsoft’s Windows chief Steven Sinofksy has posted details of what file operations look like in Windows 8. There are a few changes, including a consolidated view of all current file operations that lets you pause and resume any of them. You can also click for more details and get a pretty graph. Microsoft has …continue reading File operations in Windows: the good and the bad, the past and the future I’ve just set up Parallels Desktop 6 on a Mac, in preparation for some development work. Installed Parallels, created a new virtual machine, and selected a Windows 7 Professional with SP1 CD image downloaded from Microsoft’s excellent MSDN subscription service. The way this works is that you install the Parallels application and the create a …continue reading Parallels Desktop 6 for Mac: nice work but beware Windows security settings Microsoft has released its quarterly figures for January-March 2011. My at-a-glance summary is below. Quarter ending June 30th 2011 vs quarter ending June 30th 2010, $millions Segment Revenue Change Profit Change Client (Windows + Live) 4740 -41 2943 -123 Server and Tools 4643 +494 1774 +214 Online 662 +94 -728 -40 Business (Office) 5777 +402 …continue reading Microsoft financials: Office and server dominate as Windows falters |
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