http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/01/15/2-more-reasons-to-dump-microsoft/

The financial writer lists MANY REASONS why investing in Microsoft would be a poor idea.  Therefore he isn't flaming. 

Listed reasons:

-PC sales are slowing around 5-6% for the holidays year over year, when they should be growing bc of the brand new OS

-MS Surface sales are listed as bad, when MS is trying to move into mobile 

Here is another article, and another opininon.

http://beta.fool.com/et1980/2013/01/13/5-reasons-to-buy-microsoft-now/21511/?source=TheMotleyFool

Some of the reasoning there wasn't that great. 

For example:

1. increase in future dividend rate -  well, that will cut down on future growth.  A company basically wants to increase dividends when it knows that investing into the company won't provide as good of a return as just giving it away to investors, and is therefore a signal to investors and the markets that future growth won't be as high as it is now.

2. Growth projections-  It lists 14% growth for 2014....... the writer must be stoned. 

3.  The writer lists innovation with the MS Surface.....given the poor sales, the writer must be stoned.

4.  Upcoming Catalyst-  A catalyst is usually identified as a trend either helping or hurting a company ( like more people buying PC's, or growth in techie culture, etc), but lists none of these.  This is bad, as in gaming journalismp level of bad.

1. But this goes for companies who actually need to finance their investments. MS does not need to do this, because they have billions of dollars in cash. You make it sound like paying a dividend is something bad. IBM, Apple and Oracle all do it for a reason.

2. It lists 14% growth untill 2014. And this is not the opininon of the writer, but the opinion of different analysts. You can find it here: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ae?s=MSFT+Analyst+Estimates

3. Surface had a distribution problem more than anything else and you know it. I still think it (or Surface 2 or whatever) has a decent chance to succeed.

4. I agree the author could have described it better (like the rise of Nokia thanks to MS (+120% in the past 6 months), the push to the cloud, where MS is doing a fantastic job, etc.)

A company that posts a dividend is signaling that it will grow less in the future.  That much is considered a given, unless you are talking about companies in dire straits such as Sony (who definitely won't be increasing their dividends anytime soon) who cannot afford to increase their dividends or declare the corporation's first dividend.        

What do you think a dividend is?

Youre asking me? 

ok, a dividend is a reward to investors for buying the stock.  It is the thing that gives stock value.  However, it is assumed that a company that is growing and prosperous will post a dividend in the future, and also assumed that if it is growing by a good pace, then it can avoid declaring a dividend and still get a good increase in its stock price.  Thats a lot of facts to keep in mind, concurrently, and I haven't contradicted myself.  I have a finance degree and know what I'm talking about. 

 ok great, so we're arguing over semantics now. 

Useless post.

rhetoric, more useless postings

Between your obvious troll thread of the Surface sales and this thread where you won't consider an article that goes against yours I am starting to see a trend here.