{"id":378,"date":"2007-10-26T16:13:56","date_gmt":"2007-10-26T15:13:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/?p=378"},"modified":"2007-10-26T16:13:56","modified_gmt":"2007-10-26T15:13:56","slug":"two-spins-on-microsofts-excellent-quarter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/378-two-spins-on-microsofts-excellent-quarter.html","title":{"rendered":"Two spins on Microsoft’s excellent quarter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft has delivered an excellent set of results<\/a>, showing growth in pretty much all areas.<\/p>\n

It seems to me that you can spin this in a couple of ways. First, you could argue that Microsoft is alive and well and still in the race<\/a>. Certainly, with figures like these you can hardly suggest that it is out<\/em> of the race.<\/p>\n

Second, you could argue that the figures demonstrate how monopolies can continue to make good profits even when their products disappoint, especially in a buoyant market like computing.<\/p>\n

The truth? Somewhere in between. It doesn’t matter how good the financials are: the disappointment with Vista is real. Personally I have Vista working fairly well, though annoyingly slowly at times, but I notice plenty of people advising one another to stick with XP, for performance and compatibility. Maybe the long-awaited SP1 will fix it, but some are now resigned to waiting for Windows 7 (you know, odd-number release theory) for a really good upgrade. Vista’s problems have created an opportunity for Apple and even Linux to grab some market share.<\/p>\n

Other shadows hanging over Microsoft that come to mind:<\/p>\n