Congratulations to Microsoft for a huge comeback!

[freedquaker]

I have recently admitted to be a "Microsoft hater" for various reasons such as their monopolistic policies, bloated & inefficient OS (Vista...), incompotent products (Zune, Windows RT etc...), bully tactics (forcing windows 8 and tablet strategy on people, prior XB1 policies etc)... However, I have not been a hater of the Microsoft entity but merely that particular "stage" of Microsoft. The Microsoft of the Bill Gates Era (Pre-Vista) was great, and I always liked them, but the Microsoft of the Steve Balmer Era (post-Vista, and Ribbon) gathered all the hatred from me that they deserved. I migrated to Linux in several of my machines in one way or another, though dropping windows was out of the question.

 

However, especially after the stepdown of Steve Balmer (and with the office of Satya Nadella), things have started to improve tremendously! I am starting to like their new policies. I see that they are figthing at multiple fronts nowadays and striking back with gradual victories in each.

 

* They started to push the net & cloud strategy pretty extensively. They do not only match google (and drive) in this area but also supplement a much more sophisticated office solution. One drive (1 TB) with or without office is a pretty neat and integrated solution.

* They cut down the licensing costs and started to push cheap yet decent laptops / ultrabooks / netbooks to fight chromebooks. These things double down with a tablet interface at will, which is pretty good with touch and can be disabled. Although there are still disadvantages with Windows 8, the pros are more than enough to offset against windows 7 (at least on a touch device) or chromeOS. You can / could buy a decent win8.1 laptop with one year office 360 subscription for $99 - $199.

* They obviously cooperated with intel to stop the arm - android - chromeOS onslaught, and with intel and MS that cut down their prices substantially (Atom quad core SOC is around $15-$25, and win8 license is $0-$20), we see a huge attack of cheap windows 8 tablets and convertables. I see little reason to buy an android tablet instead of a windows one unless you are into a huge plethora of android apps, which are also available in ipads and smartphones. For most people who do the casual stuff like browsing, music, email, video etc, these tablets are even better by doubling down as PCs, especially when connected to a monitor thru HDMI.

* I like the way windows is headed. They started to listen to the customers by streamlining certain windows 7 and 8 features into 10, adding more sophisticated and well wanted features from Linux or elsewhere. The use of flash specific technologies such wimboot is also a big step for efficiency.

* I have to admit that the XB1 gaming scene looks great and after a disastrous start, they got their sh*t together, and hopefully will further go in that direction. Although I still think PS4 is a much better deal with the features and hardware, I cannot deny the quality of XB1 games, and the fact that MS seems to have past over some of the major hurdles of an inefficient hardware design. The difference between two machines will likely to stay around 20% (perfectly acceptable) except when the XB1 bottlenecks (due to bandwidth or ESRAM capacity) are a hindrance. Getting rid of the kinect and cutting down the prices are good moves for MS, and they are likely to win the NPDs for November and December, which is crucial for not letting the gap to increase too much and keep the market share relevant.