"Microsoft is dying" wasn't in the original title. I added that for more hits.

...and Bod isn't the know all end all of the internet. Sometimes its best to think for yourself. 

Hmm... actually I find your arguments (Bodhesatva) are the saddest excuses for statements. Total lack of substantiation in your reasoning:

1) So what if it's a guy and a blog. A good blog is probably as good as an analysis source, as any corporate lies (=marketing material from different corporations every day). Just some guy ??? aren't all people? And everything is written by some people

2) That's (=Apple fan) no reason either. Yeah, sure the writing might be biased, but just Apple-fan as an reason for lack of credibility? Analyse the text, find the missing links, errors etc. Those are be reasons to declare an article silly. Your writing is silly and much more on the wild side and unaccounted for.!

But, back to the article; It certainly was entertaining, a lot more than ordinary forum posts. Certainly it was biased and against MS, but at least he had some statements to support his views, more than can be said about most of the writing here.

The article was a great example of "cherrypicking", looking at only those facts that support his teory, but still there was even some truth in it. A lot of corporations are already working against MS and partly because of the reasons he proclaimed.

That is the dumbest most bias article I ever read. Not even worth arguing about.

I think it may be because something else like this might come out of it.

http://www.gamepro.com/gamepro/domestic/games/features/111823.shtml

Feature: The 10 Worst-Selling Consoles of All Time

1. Apple Pippen

Apple and successful Japanese toy maker Bandai teamed up in 1995 to deliver a next-gen video game console and their lack of experience showed. The system launched at a pricey $599, making it more expensive albeit less powerful than the competition (kinda hard to sell something on that value proposition). The platform failed to gain any traction, had an appallingly limited roster of games, and only sold 42,000 units before being discontinued in 1997. Combine its ridiculously low sales in addition to making PC World's "Worst Tech Products of All-time," and the Pippin easily tops our list of the most under-performing, high-profile consoles ever.

Key games: none

For the record, I'm done, but I just wanted to say, that you guys should be master debaters, your points are so irrifutable.

Of course I'm being sarcastic, this is the sorriest excuse for an "online" debate I've ever witnessed. If there was an article being negative about Nintendo unfairly, I gurantee you I not only be able too, but certainly make it my business to point out the fallacy and call that person on it, in a very demanding way.

No one can do that here it seems, the article is very intelligently written afterall, and I feel it has largely went over some posters heads. 

Nice move with the title then, especially when you're accusing people of fanboyism. In any case, the blog posting does talk about "Microsoft's dying empire".

It's not really about what Bod thinks about it, it's about the things he pointed out. Think of it as a proof by counter example. He pointed out some things in the article which, to me, are enough to make me disregard the article as mediocre at best.

"Windows XP has floated along as the default choice for PC consumers, but when Microsoft tried to raise the price and tack on fluff features with the Vista rebranding, buyers demanded to upgrade to the previous version. Microsoft is still shipping Vista to manufacturers, but corporations and end users are frequently reverting to Windows XP, killing Microsoft’s ability to leverage its market position to push new proprietary standards and raise prices for features that were once included for free, such as standard networking."

This paragraph is just tedious to read.

1) While Vista might have some 'fluff' features (which OSX and Linux have as well), there is a lot of work under the hood in Vista. In fact, the changes under the hood are generally the reason people have so much trouble with it. Things like reduced admin access cause all sorts of issues because developers have become acustomed to having full system access and write their programs in an 'unsecure' manor. If Vista really is a 'rebranding', why are there so many issues?

I'd say 90% of the arguments I see against Vista are the exact same arguments I saw against XP when it came out (especially from Win2k users). However, I agree that the cost of Vista is too much compared to the new features.

2) Calling reverting back to XP 'an upgrade' is something that I deem childish in a 'professionally written' article.

3) Corporations are hardly reverting back to XP. Corporation upgrade cycles are slow and any company that has already rolled out Vista (or any other desktop OS in its first year) system wide deserves any trouble they get into. Some corporations still haven't even moved to XP because of the length of time it takes to do full system upgrades.

3) Which proprietary standards does Vista push? DirectX10 is the only one I can think of, and while it could *possibly* be backported to XP, it wouldn't be easy as the driver system would have to be rewritten (as was done in Vista) to support certain features (such as GPU virtualisation and process sharing).

4) What is he referring to with "Standard Networking"? Any version of Vista can be used on a network without an issue. Is he referring to domains, because if so, that was limited to the Pro version of XP anyway.

@fkusumot

Just found it interesting. I find clarity is even more important than intelligence, when it comes to communication.

@NJ5

The article is clearly about the death of microsoft. If I hadn't alluded to that in the title, would you have even clicked on another post called "The death of HD-DVD" I certainly wouldn't. The more people that read this, the better, because it's informative, imo. I could care less if I have to allude to the articles contents to do so.

You won't see me post many negative articles on this forum, but I found this one particularly interesting, not because of its negative comments about MS, but instead, because of the explainations that it gives about why the death of HD-DVD is better for the industry, all around, because it removes required taxes for use of MS proprietary software, which lowers industry costs all around and allows for a more open use of the hardware, not to mention the fact that the Blu-Ray actually holds more data than the HD-DVD.

Of course, it did turn into a fanboy anger management thread, which I regret, however, I stand by the fact that the article can't be dismissed, and contains valuable information for those open-minded enough to take it with a grain of salt.