back to article Windows 8 and beyond: Microsoft's next decade

January marks not just a new decade but also the 10-year anniversary of Steve Ballmer's appointment as Microsoft's chief executive officer. The last 10 years offered a mixed report card for Ballmer and Microsoft: Windows XP versus Vista, success of the Xbox but treading water on mobile, corporate revenue grew 163 per cent …

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  1. Neil Stansbury

    BBC Interview

    Dunno if it's UK only or not:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/8462267.stm

  2. nick 30
    Jobs Horns

    My prediction

    The biggest thing that MS wants to do is move everyone to a rental type scheme for paying for software. Instead of a one-off fee they want people to pay $5 per month for windows, then a bit more for office and so on. It'll start with all their corporate customers but eventually it'll apply to everyone. That way people will figure they might as well get the latest version if its no difference in price. Hardware vendors will love it because it'll sell more hardware than the "its safer/safer/better" marketing strategy.

    The Max Tax will become the MS Rent

    1. Nuke
      Jobs Horns

      Getting the latest version?

      I agree that rental is MS's (and many other software vendors') wet dream. But the purpose is not to persuade people to get the latest version. There will no longer be much need for MS to produce any "latest versions". Because software does not wear out and now does all that most people want, "latest versions" have just now become a change of the bells, whistles and eye candy - and users are increasingly realising this. That is MS's nightmare - users not bothering to buy new versions of Windows.

      But if MS can get users on rental they can just sit back and collect the rent, like a landlord who never bothers to redecorate - at least until there is some radical shift in computer technology driven from elswhere (as the Internet did to them 12-13 years ago). Meanwhile they would only need to attend to bug fixes and vulnerabilities (though their track record on that is not exactly dynamic).

      I'm not clear why hardware makers would like a rental scheme. The main motive for people buying new PCs in the past has only been to get a new version of Windows. That motive will all but go.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    umm..

    " All-About-Microsoft blogger Mary-Jo Foley"

    you really have a job that consists of belching about a company, only one company in particular ? Nice. I thought I had it made being a wino. But I am saddled with the daily choice of buckie or white lightning. No such mental torment for yourself, only one bottom to feed from....

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

    i don't like this new fangled trend of video clips in lieu of an article, it almost seems like you're just too lazy to type it out.

    i don't want to be watching people talk, the written language was invented to combat this very issue, can you maybe get a secreteray to transcribe it and post that beneth the clip? hell you could even find some budding journalist and pay them a pittance to type it up into an article maybe..

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      At least you can watch it

      The firewalls and/or proxies here block video so all I get is an interesting sounding topic then a blank space or gray square.

    2. Bilgepipe

      Yep

      Agreed, I can't watch videos from work anyway, nor do I want to.

  5. Charles Manning

    Twenty years?

    Given the quality of Ballmer's predictions I severely doubt he'll be there fore 20 years.

  6. Jonathan McColl
    Coat

    Dara Ó Briain?

    The video clips don't work for me either, because I'm now unsure if that was Steve Ballmer or Dara Ó Briain, high on something and dancing about the stage before telling Click that he didn't like looking at the past (failures) or at the future (failures).

    Office 2007 sucks, but I use MS software all the time, and don't really understand how any company can have billionaires all over the place, and am really very confused. Will Windows 8 make this worse for me or better, or will it just happen? When I've started paying rent on it, will they send me a 54-digit activation code each month when my direct debit goes through? Otherwise, if I stop paying, how will they get my computer to stop as well?

    And what would happen if Tesco moved into OS software now they've cornered food, tellies, stationery, petrol, clothes and banking? They're so like MS in helping us to spend less every day, that if they merged we'd all get richer.

    I think I'll go watch Avatar again.

    1. Keith Oldham

      Re : how will they get my computer.....

      "Otherwise, if I stop paying, how will they get my computer to stop as well?"

      Are you serious ?

    2. This post has been deleted by its author

  7. AndrueC Silver badge
    FAIL

    I have no comment at this time

    ..because I don't have time to sit through a video which will likely take ten minutes to say what could be read in half a minute, which will eat into our somewhat parlous bandwidth and that requires me to find a pair of headphones to plug into my workstation.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Haaaaaaaaa Butt Plug MS

    Hmmmmm it takes 30 times the amount of electricity, on a computer 400 times faster, using all the dingleberries of Uranus - from the Microsoft Basic, Home, Small Business, Enterprise and Corporate versions of all 2999 bits of stolen and copied Microsoft original software - that Microsoft copied and stole off everyone else, with 400 Gig of ram and 60Gig of hard drive space dedicated solely to the operating system, with a $40,000 licensing agreement - just to sit here and jerk off over my own comments......

    Could have done the same thing on a cheap shit $50 recycled computer using all free and all Linux.

    LOL

    Yeah sure Microsoft has a bright future.

    Ballmer you tool.

  9. Jean-Luc
    Thumb Down

    Second AC about being too lazy to type

    What's this? Can't be bothered to type it? I am pretty sure I, and most of the Reg's users, can read 3-4 pages of text much more quickly than we can watch a 5 min video. And, if there is anything worthwhile, not too difficult to go back and re-read.

    Furthermore, I am pretty sure writing it is also faster than filming it, unless you really go for stream-of-consciousness video. So what's the point?

    Pls, use the appropriate media. We're not talking Avatar content here.

    (Nope, dinna watch it)

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