Being banned for this comment is ridiculous. Was quite a witty remark.

History of baiting, pointless comments. Ban is long overdue.

See now I don't agree, a statement like that is obviously intended as a "Yeah?  Well your preferred company is even worse because _____" which is exactly the kind of posting I think the mod team should try to keep out of the forums.  We have enough of a team vs. team mentality around here without posts like that.

why the f.. are you talking about PS3? I hate you all... This thread is about Microsoft's demise...

Depends on what you define "good".  Microsoft generally releases products that are pretty much in beta and have consumers pay for them to cover costs.  It normally takes Microsoft a few tries to get it right because of it.  So they're not going to have a tablet/phone that's right in a bit (Windows Phones should be doing better, but Microsoft is marketing them poorly).  Microsoft is poorly run company and if they didn't have their monoply on PC OS' they would have been out of business a while ago.  Get Balmer out of the company and put a man with a vision in charge and I'm sure Microsoft can become the biggest company in the world again.

You wish!

MS really are in trouble. There products are just not exciting anymore. Win8 isn't wanted. Windows phone is in all honesty not great. Surface is a Bomb. Xbox is there only strong point still selling because people Want it! Not because it's forced on a new PC they buy or because a phone shop pushes someone to get something they don't want.
I want balmer fired

This is to be expected. Microsoft is really fighting against the tide at this point. It's so obvious that the windows brand is not at all helping and that consumers have literally migrated to apple/google. The surface tablet has already bombed and windows phones are about as relevant as Sony phones. To be struggling with tablets/phones already this late in the game becomes a major problem for microsoft going forward. Surface needs to sell in order to capture tablet market share.

Nothing outside of windows has really ever managed to capture any significant market share. With the post-pc world finally emerging, microsoft much like many other dinosaurs is caught trying to catch up. Important to remember, microsoft hasn't had much success in other sectors even with it's vast amount of money.

Microsoft products are not desirable anymore. The consumer is moving on. So yes, downgrade.

How does this affect the user end of this? (people who buy MS software etc...)

Goldman's recommendation: Destroy the company to give some good short term profitability to the shareholders? Awesome.