Compusa. They have problems with thier corporate setup. They pay close to the bare minimum so they can't hire anyone really worth a damn. The people who run the show are all about short term rather than long term. I've seen this again and again over the last 3 or 4 years. That company is in dire need of a corporate management change. I swear even walmarts management could do better than them.
What they really need to do to fix thier problems.
A) bring back commissions to employees, or raise the salary caps by 50 percent.
B) look at best buy how they do morning meetings with thier people, create an environment where people generally like coming to work and having fun helping customers and making goals. Not to mention pay up to 15 an hour or more for good associates. Even thier magnolia pays some people 80k a year because they are worth every penny for it. Compusa has the products. They just need the people and support to make thier stores good again. Instead of closing stores after a year of no growth take time and figure out why the stores aren't growing. Is it a staffing issue? is it customers? is it the market?
C) Merchandising. Focus on it 3rd after people and customers currently it seems to be number 1.
D) get rid of the damn crazy audits. People are so focused on those because its the only indicator they seem to get reamed about directly on. They need to focus on the customers.
Fry's does well because they pay commissions to key people pay crap to others and have lots of products. Walmart does reasonably well because they pay crap, lots of products but lowest prices. Compusa pays crap, has lots of products and same or higher price than everyone else? See something here?
Hummingbird factories. Hummingbirds have a farther reach than most bees and will do most of the same job. We just have to create heated homes for them and train them to take over the job that bees have been doing for years.
What if Gamestop paid you x number of dollars to make it exclusive to thier stores for x period of time? You'd be garruanteed the cash that you'd otherwise make through the other retailers and you don't have to deal with as many retailers. Sounds like a win/win to me. Also what if Gamestop decided they didn't want to carry your game?
Hah... You don't know people at Apple do you?? What about the stock options scandal? Also, Apple would have gone through the same issues had they licsensed out thier stuff.
Actually there are better reasons and yes there has been marketing... The Microsoft field representatives have been pushing hard on Office 2007 for months at retail causing the typical RSP(retail sales person) to have full belief in pushing Office 2007 products from day one. They pushed on Vista quite hard but the typical RSP repsonse on thier belief in Vista as a product is "I'll wait 6 months before I upgrade and have an opinion since they didn't give me a copy but overall I think its kinda pretty but a little slow". The Microsoft reps seem to have a visible well pronounced belief in the Office 2007 product as well. Thier Vista belief seems to be quite limited and this I think is reflected at retail and sales even. Also, over 80 percent of product decisions are made at retail and its reflecting this.
As it is... Microsoft's best option is to limp along till summer. Then while thier stock price is low. Work hard as hell on the service pack 1 out by july which better include at least one major extra feature like WinFS. Get a new version of xbox 360 out at the current premium price while dropping premium and core 100 bucks. Getting Rev 2 of the zune out before holiday. Push like hell. Do retail training meetings across the country or Roadshows as they used to call them. Give away Vista Premium service pack 1 to Rsp's by mail no later than July and offer Office at a discount to them along with it. Do something about the decreasing Morale among the Microsoft field reps (Give them a raise, give them product, benefits, I don't know why but they are depressed lately I've even heard a manager talking about the possibility of getting one of them to work for his Best Buy. Gawd!!! Who would go back to retail??). Then watch as thier profits fly.
- Viken
Not only that... They would have given all the retail sales people a copy... Many who get a copy go build thier machine right after just for the latest version of windows... But Microsoft built Vista around the idea of just updating your current machine rather than building up a new machine. To make the PC vendors out during the fall happy... Then they had thier tech garruantee which really killed them..
Thier marketing is unfocussed. It needs a big push at retail... Huge!!! Thier best bet now is to just play along until summer around july or so when the stock hits the summer low. Then release it out to all the rsps along with Service pack 1. Help develop a massive lineup of compatable direct x 10 cards and games to release around then. Do a price drop on the xbox hardware lineup of no less than 50 bucks. Push out the Zunephone. Another Push of office 2007.
This would make them the king of retail through holiday 2007 and well into 2008.
Actually I've read over 1400 books and I clear through 3-5 a month regularly... But my ADHD doesn't do well with grammar... Though it probably doesn't help that most of my reading has been scifi, fantasy, autobiographies, sales and marketing books.
So they want them to sell like mad beating previous years sales by 6 to 8 percent consistently or they are fired... If they sell to 70 percent of thier market Halo 2 or equivalent which for all intensive purposes is really a teen rated game they are fired as well... Oh yea they get paid the equivalent of walmart employees....
My next question is...
Who in thier right mind would want to work for them now???
From working in the retail industry... I can see that Vista optimism really isn't all that high... I think its primarily due to the Microsoft choice this time around not to give copies to the Retail Sales people or even thier own field reps... Its that kind of Seed planting that in the past really drew excitement about thier new products like Office and Windows... Speaking to myself I never sold windows and office till I got a free copy from Microsoft to try out for myself and see what it was made of and then I sold like 6 or 8 copies of each for just my 1 freebie... This also caused me to go build my own machine to handle said software helping the hardware vendors we've come to love over the years...
The sad part is... Even though I'm not totally sold on Vista.. I am completly sold on the new office and I'm a Veteran user. But among retail its not really selling that much... As an investor and a retail industry person... I'm kinda miffed about the results. A product that for all intensive purposes should sell very well... Isn't... I'm not sure if its a marketing thing, slow upgrade cycle or consumers just waiting about 6 months like I am. Thinking to make the upgrade after they work out the bugs....
I knew there was a good reason that I bought an HP laptop.. Also, my Gateway Laptop... Both of which have run perfectly since day one minus the stuff that they ship with.. Thank God for websites like this http://www.howtohaven.com/system/createwindowssetu pdisk.shtml
I say this with over 15 years of successful retail experience... Microsoft is failing to capitalize on what made previous versions of Office and Windows Successful... That is retail.. In the past with windows 98, 2000, xp, office 2000. They gave much of the retail sales People a copy of said software and even gave it to the Microsoft field representatives who used it and showed trainings on it every day at retail... I call these people the seeds of Microsoft sales and products... They got free copies while early in their careers and always remember Microsoft with a kind heart and thus recommend and use it wholeheartedly... My family members who just happen to be IT managers at large banks... Are asking me that question... Should I upgrade?? At this time I'm very iffy about it. Plus, lacking a full product to play with.. I'm not inclined to recommend this product especially with the way Microsoft has been treating their overworked retail team and Retail lately. Eighty percent of decisions are made at retail and Microsoft is severely lacking at retail this year. Everything literally getting barely done in the 11th hour when they've had over 6 months to work on it and forcing those under them to work down to the wire to finish what could have been done with a higher attention to detail and fixing mistakes made up the chain but can't because of a lack of the ultimate premium called time.. At retail I'm seeing bad things.... All little stuff that's not reminiscent of the Microsoft I once knew. Who was detail oriented, Well planned, well executed, every time. I suspect Microsoft will learn their lessons from this... Its been too long since they launched a product... and these old lessons will come back to bite them and many of them know it just not the right people..
Also, to anyone who has a clue of foresite they will know that Vista is not the final product... It is the start stage for a series of products still in development... All that research for features to be added to vista hasn't ended yet.. They just didn't put it in there yet.. Its still coming being worked on... and there is no shortage of add on's in little groups of projects being worked on..
-Viken L
I say this with over 15 years of successful retail experience... Microsoft is failing to capitalize on what made previous versions of Office and Windows Successful... That is retail.. In the past with windows 98, 2000, xp, office 2000. They gave much of the retail sales People a copy of said software and even gave it to the Microsoft field representatives who used it and showed trainings on it every day at retail... I call these people the seeds of Microsoft sales and products... They got free copies while early in their careers and always remember Microsoft with a kind heart and thus recommend and use it wholeheartedly... My family members who just happen to be IT managers at large banks... Are asking me that question... Should I upgrade?? At this time I'm very iffy about it. Plus, lacking a full product to play with.. I'm not inclined to recommend this product especially with the way Microsoft has been treating their overworked retail team and Retail lately.
Eighty percent of decisions are made at retail and Microsoft is severely lacking at retail this year. Everything literally getting barely done in the 11th hour when they've had over 6 months to work on it and forcing those under them to work down to the wire to finish what could have been done with a higher attention to detail and fixing mistakes made up the chain but can't because of a lack of the ultimate premium called time.. At retail I'm seeing bad things.... All little stuff that's not reminiscent of the Microsoft I once knew. Who was detail oriented, Well planned, well executed, every time. I suspect Microsoft will learn their lessons from this... Its been too long since they launched a product... and these old lessons will come back to bite them and many of them know it just not the right people..
-Viken L
As for Wii users they would have to upgrade thier current systems to handle the higher graphics.. Its just a simple thing.. Its not like they can't play the games they just can't play them in high def. Sony did it with the PS2 when they added phone jack, network, better drive, slightly faster proccessor, Nintendo has already done it with the DS lite... What Microsoft is doing is nothing new to the market.. Its minimalistic improvements to the current product.. Nintendo if anything might be able to be first in the price drop war... But right now it makes more sense for Microsoft to intiate it because nintendo is quite literally killing them with the Wii... Which is adding a huge market to game consoles all the way from Grandparents to kids... The wii will be the likely winner of this round because of its overall family appeal... Its got the widest market out of the 3 systems and it only makes sense for them to initiate an upgrade I'm guessing in less than 2 years they will release a High def version of the Wii if the DS is any example.
If sony drops thier price do you think it will go unaswered by either nintendo or Microsoft??? Its very very likely that Microsoft would follow suit and do the same if not being the market leader in doing so... In wich case Sony will be grasping at the possiblity of making some sort of profit... Even though the cheap ps2 is making them a killing at the moment.
I work in the gaming industry... My prediction at the pricing of consoles over the next year maybe two years is that Xbox will have a newer model out that includes HDMI bigger hard drive, gigabit ethernet and possibly wireless installed (If not they will sell 802.11n adapters)that will be competitively priced at 349.99-449.99 the current xbox premium system will drop to 249.99-349.99 and the current xbox core system will drop to 149.99-249.99... Nintendo of course will follow suit and drop thier current system down to 149.99-199.99 to compete with the 360 at the lower price range.. But they will also introduce Wii Premium to stay at the higher price of 249.99 this will include better graphics, media center functions, more memory, ect... Sony of course will have to follow suit if they have any hope of doing well and drop the ps3 by 100 dollars at the very least.
This is all elementry stuff here.. Anyone makes a move in price the others will follow..
Because HP has been buying the printers of the competition for years and checking them in thier labs... Disecting printers testing the dots and shades of the prints being done... I remember once talking to a guy in HP research who commented that HP had in its hands printers which did photos at an astronomical rate of speed... HP just wanted to release slow improvements to quality prints than sudden.. To keep the consumers coming back for the next best thing... Hard Drive makers have done the same thing.. They've had Terbayte Hard drives in thier labs since 1990.. The only thing that has changed is the Physical size form factor over the years...
If they were serious they would just give you a credit of.01 on thier store by registering your product then sell the download update to you for.01. Then they would be in compliance with the law.
Ever since they hired on that guy from Walmart to run retail strategy its been getting worse at least at retail. My retailers are having a lower opinion of Microsoft lately and the Microsoft Rep looks overworked and unhappy. I'm beginning to question as a stockholder about the direction of thier retail strategy which seeds the entire industy. Why they hired someone from Walmart I dunno... They definatly should have hired someone from Target.. At least they take care of thier workers and suppliers and practice doing it daily. Probably why Target is expanding in sales at 7 percent a year.
I say we allow it so long as no costs are passed on to the customer, government or seller. So the RIAA has to come up with the money to cover all costs associated with implementation, research, enforcement and all enforcement has to go through public agencies which again they must cover the costs for.
Lets say that they can make DRM required but it cannot cost the customer, the government, or the manufacture of the item a single penny... All costs associated with enforcement, research, implementation, Jailtime costs, police enforcement, customer support, ect. Must be absorbed by the music industry and they can't hire thier own people to enforce it... All must be payed to the state and use only public agency lawyers.
Music industry of course will balk at the idea that they have to pay for DRM which already costs societ well into the billions of dollars in both time and money.
All the research into the many of the new technologies like winfs filesystems, the removal of the bios and many other things that are whats likely going to be added to the new operating systems... Seriously I think just from an analytical point of view and watching what microsoft has been doing for so long shows that they have achieve many different directions that are promising add ons to the next operating systems... They tried to include them all in Vista way before they were ready for mainstream but you can bet your quad-core that they will be ready by the next release. Vista and future platforms are built from the ground up... and its only a matter of time before we see mainstream with new technologies... The only thing I can see that really needs improvement from Microsoft at this point in time is
-Zune commercials
-Retail agressivenesss
+Seems like they've been getting weak at retail lately
- less POP
- less employee positive
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Compusa. They have problems with thier corporate setup. They pay close to the bare minimum so they can't hire anyone really worth a damn. The people who run the show are all about short term rather than long term. I've seen this again and again over the last 3 or 4 years. That company is in dire need of a corporate management change. I swear even walmarts management could do better than them. What they really need to do to fix thier problems. A) bring back commissions to employees, or raise the salary caps by 50 percent. B) look at best buy how they do morning meetings with thier people, create an environment where people generally like coming to work and having fun helping customers and making goals. Not to mention pay up to 15 an hour or more for good associates. Even thier magnolia pays some people 80k a year because they are worth every penny for it. Compusa has the products. They just need the people and support to make thier stores good again. Instead of closing stores after a year of no growth take time and figure out why the stores aren't growing. Is it a staffing issue? is it customers? is it the market? C) Merchandising. Focus on it 3rd after people and customers currently it seems to be number 1. D) get rid of the damn crazy audits. People are so focused on those because its the only indicator they seem to get reamed about directly on. They need to focus on the customers. Fry's does well because they pay commissions to key people pay crap to others and have lots of products. Walmart does reasonably well because they pay crap, lots of products but lowest prices. Compusa pays crap, has lots of products and same or higher price than everyone else? See something here?
Hummingbird factories. Hummingbirds have a farther reach than most bees and will do most of the same job. We just have to create heated homes for them and train them to take over the job that bees have been doing for years.
What if Gamestop paid you x number of dollars to make it exclusive to thier stores for x period of time? You'd be garruanteed the cash that you'd otherwise make through the other retailers and you don't have to deal with as many retailers. Sounds like a win/win to me. Also what if Gamestop decided they didn't want to carry your game?
Hah... You don't know people at Apple do you?? What about the stock options scandal? Also, Apple would have gone through the same issues had they licsensed out thier stuff.
Actually there are better reasons and yes there has been marketing... The Microsoft field representatives have been pushing hard on Office 2007 for months at retail causing the typical RSP(retail sales person) to have full belief in pushing Office 2007 products from day one. They pushed on Vista quite hard but the typical RSP repsonse on thier belief in Vista as a product is "I'll wait 6 months before I upgrade and have an opinion since they didn't give me a copy but overall I think its kinda pretty but a little slow". The Microsoft reps seem to have a visible well pronounced belief in the Office 2007 product as well. Thier Vista belief seems to be quite limited and this I think is reflected at retail and sales even. Also, over 80 percent of product decisions are made at retail and its reflecting this. As it is... Microsoft's best option is to limp along till summer. Then while thier stock price is low. Work hard as hell on the service pack 1 out by july which better include at least one major extra feature like WinFS. Get a new version of xbox 360 out at the current premium price while dropping premium and core 100 bucks. Getting Rev 2 of the zune out before holiday. Push like hell. Do retail training meetings across the country or Roadshows as they used to call them. Give away Vista Premium service pack 1 to Rsp's by mail no later than July and offer Office at a discount to them along with it. Do something about the decreasing Morale among the Microsoft field reps (Give them a raise, give them product, benefits, I don't know why but they are depressed lately I've even heard a manager talking about the possibility of getting one of them to work for his Best Buy. Gawd!!! Who would go back to retail??). Then watch as thier profits fly. - Viken
Not only that... They would have given all the retail sales people a copy... Many who get a copy go build thier machine right after just for the latest version of windows... But Microsoft built Vista around the idea of just updating your current machine rather than building up a new machine. To make the PC vendors out during the fall happy... Then they had thier tech garruantee which really killed them.. Thier marketing is unfocussed. It needs a big push at retail... Huge!!! Thier best bet now is to just play along until summer around july or so when the stock hits the summer low. Then release it out to all the rsps along with Service pack 1. Help develop a massive lineup of compatable direct x 10 cards and games to release around then. Do a price drop on the xbox hardware lineup of no less than 50 bucks. Push out the Zunephone. Another Push of office 2007. This would make them the king of retail through holiday 2007 and well into 2008.
Actually I've read over 1400 books and I clear through 3-5 a month regularly... But my ADHD doesn't do well with grammar... Though it probably doesn't help that most of my reading has been scifi, fantasy, autobiographies, sales and marketing books.
Hah... If anything I think the District Manager should get written up for each of these as well.
So they want them to sell like mad beating previous years sales by 6 to 8 percent consistently or they are fired... If they sell to 70 percent of thier market Halo 2 or equivalent which for all intensive purposes is really a teen rated game they are fired as well... Oh yea they get paid the equivalent of walmart employees.... My next question is... Who in thier right mind would want to work for them now???
From working in the retail industry... I can see that Vista optimism really isn't all that high... I think its primarily due to the Microsoft choice this time around not to give copies to the Retail Sales people or even thier own field reps... Its that kind of Seed planting that in the past really drew excitement about thier new products like Office and Windows... Speaking to myself I never sold windows and office till I got a free copy from Microsoft to try out for myself and see what it was made of and then I sold like 6 or 8 copies of each for just my 1 freebie... This also caused me to go build my own machine to handle said software helping the hardware vendors we've come to love over the years... The sad part is... Even though I'm not totally sold on Vista.. I am completly sold on the new office and I'm a Veteran user. But among retail its not really selling that much... As an investor and a retail industry person... I'm kinda miffed about the results. A product that for all intensive purposes should sell very well... Isn't... I'm not sure if its a marketing thing, slow upgrade cycle or consumers just waiting about 6 months like I am. Thinking to make the upgrade after they work out the bugs....
I wonder if I should invest in some sunglass maker that specifically prevents cameras from taking pictures of your eyes...
I knew there was a good reason that I bought an HP laptop.. Also, my Gateway Laptop... Both of which have run perfectly since day one minus the stuff that they ship with.. Thank God for websites like this http://www.howtohaven.com/system/createwindowssetu pdisk.shtml
I say this with over 15 years of successful retail experience... Microsoft is failing to capitalize on what made previous versions of Office and Windows Successful... That is retail.. In the past with windows 98, 2000, xp, office 2000. They gave much of the retail sales People a copy of said software and even gave it to the Microsoft field representatives who used it and showed trainings on it every day at retail... I call these people the seeds of Microsoft sales and products... They got free copies while early in their careers and always remember Microsoft with a kind heart and thus recommend and use it wholeheartedly... My family members who just happen to be IT managers at large banks... Are asking me that question... Should I upgrade?? At this time I'm very iffy about it. Plus, lacking a full product to play with.. I'm not inclined to recommend this product especially with the way Microsoft has been treating their overworked retail team and Retail lately. Eighty percent of decisions are made at retail and Microsoft is severely lacking at retail this year. Everything literally getting barely done in the 11th hour when they've had over 6 months to work on it and forcing those under them to work down to the wire to finish what could have been done with a higher attention to detail and fixing mistakes made up the chain but can't because of a lack of the ultimate premium called time.. At retail I'm seeing bad things.... All little stuff that's not reminiscent of the Microsoft I once knew. Who was detail oriented, Well planned, well executed, every time. I suspect Microsoft will learn their lessons from this... Its been too long since they launched a product... and these old lessons will come back to bite them and many of them know it just not the right people.. Also, to anyone who has a clue of foresite they will know that Vista is not the final product... It is the start stage for a series of products still in development... All that research for features to be added to vista hasn't ended yet.. They just didn't put it in there yet.. Its still coming being worked on... and there is no shortage of add on's in little groups of projects being worked on.. -Viken L
I say this with over 15 years of successful retail experience... Microsoft is failing to capitalize on what made previous versions of Office and Windows Successful... That is retail.. In the past with windows 98, 2000, xp, office 2000. They gave much of the retail sales People a copy of said software and even gave it to the Microsoft field representatives who used it and showed trainings on it every day at retail... I call these people the seeds of Microsoft sales and products... They got free copies while early in their careers and always remember Microsoft with a kind heart and thus recommend and use it wholeheartedly... My family members who just happen to be IT managers at large banks... Are asking me that question... Should I upgrade?? At this time I'm very iffy about it. Plus, lacking a full product to play with.. I'm not inclined to recommend this product especially with the way Microsoft has been treating their overworked retail team and Retail lately. Eighty percent of decisions are made at retail and Microsoft is severely lacking at retail this year. Everything literally getting barely done in the 11th hour when they've had over 6 months to work on it and forcing those under them to work down to the wire to finish what could have been done with a higher attention to detail and fixing mistakes made up the chain but can't because of a lack of the ultimate premium called time.. At retail I'm seeing bad things.... All little stuff that's not reminiscent of the Microsoft I once knew. Who was detail oriented, Well planned, well executed, every time. I suspect Microsoft will learn their lessons from this... Its been too long since they launched a product... and these old lessons will come back to bite them and many of them know it just not the right people.. -Viken L
As for Wii users they would have to upgrade thier current systems to handle the higher graphics.. Its just a simple thing.. Its not like they can't play the games they just can't play them in high def. Sony did it with the PS2 when they added phone jack, network, better drive, slightly faster proccessor, Nintendo has already done it with the DS lite... What Microsoft is doing is nothing new to the market.. Its minimalistic improvements to the current product.. Nintendo if anything might be able to be first in the price drop war... But right now it makes more sense for Microsoft to intiate it because nintendo is quite literally killing them with the Wii... Which is adding a huge market to game consoles all the way from Grandparents to kids... The wii will be the likely winner of this round because of its overall family appeal... Its got the widest market out of the 3 systems and it only makes sense for them to initiate an upgrade I'm guessing in less than 2 years they will release a High def version of the Wii if the DS is any example.
If sony drops thier price do you think it will go unaswered by either nintendo or Microsoft??? Its very very likely that Microsoft would follow suit and do the same if not being the market leader in doing so... In wich case Sony will be grasping at the possiblity of making some sort of profit... Even though the cheap ps2 is making them a killing at the moment. I work in the gaming industry... My prediction at the pricing of consoles over the next year maybe two years is that Xbox will have a newer model out that includes HDMI bigger hard drive, gigabit ethernet and possibly wireless installed (If not they will sell 802.11n adapters)that will be competitively priced at 349.99-449.99 the current xbox premium system will drop to 249.99-349.99 and the current xbox core system will drop to 149.99-249.99... Nintendo of course will follow suit and drop thier current system down to 149.99-199.99 to compete with the 360 at the lower price range.. But they will also introduce Wii Premium to stay at the higher price of 249.99 this will include better graphics, media center functions, more memory, ect... Sony of course will have to follow suit if they have any hope of doing well and drop the ps3 by 100 dollars at the very least. This is all elementry stuff here.. Anyone makes a move in price the others will follow..
Because HP has been buying the printers of the competition for years and checking them in thier labs... Disecting printers testing the dots and shades of the prints being done... I remember once talking to a guy in HP research who commented that HP had in its hands printers which did photos at an astronomical rate of speed... HP just wanted to release slow improvements to quality prints than sudden.. To keep the consumers coming back for the next best thing... Hard Drive makers have done the same thing.. They've had Terbayte Hard drives in thier labs since 1990.. The only thing that has changed is the Physical size form factor over the years...
If they were serious they would just give you a credit of .01 on thier store by registering your product then sell the download update to you for .01. Then they would be in compliance with the law.
Ever since they hired on that guy from Walmart to run retail strategy its been getting worse at least at retail. My retailers are having a lower opinion of Microsoft lately and the Microsoft Rep looks overworked and unhappy. I'm beginning to question as a stockholder about the direction of thier retail strategy which seeds the entire industy. Why they hired someone from Walmart I dunno... They definatly should have hired someone from Target.. At least they take care of thier workers and suppliers and practice doing it daily. Probably why Target is expanding in sales at 7 percent a year.
I say we allow it so long as no costs are passed on to the customer, government or seller. So the RIAA has to come up with the money to cover all costs associated with implementation, research, enforcement and all enforcement has to go through public agencies which again they must cover the costs for.
Lets say that they can make DRM required but it cannot cost the customer, the government, or the manufacture of the item a single penny... All costs associated with enforcement, research, implementation, Jailtime costs, police enforcement, customer support, ect. Must be absorbed by the music industry and they can't hire thier own people to enforce it... All must be payed to the state and use only public agency lawyers. Music industry of course will balk at the idea that they have to pay for DRM which already costs societ well into the billions of dollars in both time and money.
All the research into the many of the new technologies like winfs filesystems, the removal of the bios and many other things that are whats likely going to be added to the new operating systems... Seriously I think just from an analytical point of view and watching what microsoft has been doing for so long shows that they have achieve many different directions that are promising add ons to the next operating systems... They tried to include them all in Vista way before they were ready for mainstream but you can bet your quad-core that they will be ready by the next release. Vista and future platforms are built from the ground up... and its only a matter of time before we see mainstream with new technologies... The only thing I can see that really needs improvement from Microsoft at this point in time is -Zune commercials -Retail agressivenesss +Seems like they've been getting weak at retail lately - less POP - less employee positive