1.  Most people who say Vista is crap have never even used it.  Vista is actually quite good--stable, secure, and nicely laid out.  (I have been using it since beta.)  It's perceived as crap mostly because it's not XP.  The driver issues were fixed within the first two months of launch, but nobody ever talks about that.  It's more fun to mindlessly bash.

2.  The Zune is a really cool device.  Would I ever buy one?  No, I'd rather put all my music on my Chocolate.  I don't own a Zune or an iPod, but I've used both quite a bit.  I know 5 Zune owners and they all love the thing.  My brother and sister-in-law liked theirs so much that they bought a second one so they'd quit fighting over it.  I've read several tech reviews that have agreed that the Zune's price, layout and functionality actually gives the iPod a run for its money.  It just doesn't have the little apple logo on the back, so again, it's perceived as crap and mindlessly bashed by idiots who have probably never used one.

3.  The 360 is an awesome console.  This opinion is of course subject to personal preference, much like the two above it.  It's fun for people to bash because its made by a company that everyone loves to hate.  The jokes about RRoD were well deserved when it was a prevalant issue, but I think most can agree now that it's not anywhere NEAR as much of a problem as it used to be.  And now the RRoD jokes always come off as a lame attempt to defend the PS3. 

4.  The most annoying thing about your post is the "M$" thing.  The 90's called, they want their forum joke back. 

But anyway, thanks for your enlightening response to the article.  And by the way, posting this in the MS forum is obvious flame bait, and I really don't see the purpose of it anyway.

I wish Sony would at least have come up with an excuse when I called because my ps2 disc drive broke.

Yeah, because we NEVER see any crap products coming out of Japan or Korea!! 

When Nvidia does it, it's a "fuck up", but when MS does it, it's just them being "unlucky"?

I don't mind the copying... but this is the problem:

Vista < Mac OS X

Zune < IPod

(XB360 is on par)

If you are going to copy someone, at least make it better then the copy. If you give the consumer am improvement over there other options, at least you did something.

Would you consider the Wii-mote a "software innovation" then?

The 360 internals are definitely not innovative hardware ('more' does not equal 'innovative'), although it can definitely horsepower some nice vsuals and game play experiences.

RRoD was an acceptable risk to the decision makers at MS.  Given they know the high likelihood of problems due to design considerations, they hedged that their fanbase would accept these problems.  And you know what, they have.  The killer overall is that the 360 fanbase is not indicative of neither the general population of game purchasers in 2008 (or 2003 for that matter).

The bottom line is that the Jasper model in september-october will be very stable. In my eyes,my Falcon is great,zero problems so far. The price cut is great also.

Now is the time Microsoft should have sold the Xbox 360 console in the first place...but it will be xbox1 vs ps2 all over again...

This Xmass is the time to shop for a 360 because there are plenty of people that have waited for RRoD to finally be fixed. I`m glad they finally did.

Any statement about Windows copying Mac OS is complete ignorance.  A research group at Xerox back in the 70's and 80's developed the windows type interface that BOTH operating systems use.  BOTH companies liked it and did their own take on it.  Apple made a cottage industry out of suing Microsoft back in the 80's claiming that Microsoft stole their Windows idea, when really they both took the idea from Xerox. And why is Vista<OSX?  It's the most stable version of Windows there has ever been after the bugs all got worked out.  And it's not under the tyranny of Steve Jobs telling you what you can and can't run as far as software.  I'll take Windows any day.

So the Zune is a copy of the iPod?  How about all the other MP3 players out there?  How about that Samsung Instinct?  Copy of the iPhone, right?  Are you honestly saying that the iPod is the only MP3 player that has a right to exist and that no other company should try to compete with it?  That's ridiculous.  There are jillions of other MP3 players out there that look like the iPod.  You only rip on MS because they're MS.  And for the record, the Zune is a better MP3 player than the iPod.

lol, you don't know me very well. I make my living as a Microsoft Developer, and have a CS degree. In order to get that, you need to take history of computing. I don't need to take history however to know about MS. I had a PC in 1980, and have owned every OS they have ever made. I have an MSDN license, and thus all MS software is available to me. I have evaluated, or utilized most of it.

MS does a lot of things well, very well. But there consumer offerings (not servers/dev tools) are all direct copies of competitors.

There is not enough time in the day to explain to you how OSX is better then Vista. Also comparing these OS's to what came out of Xerox PARC is ridiculous. Oh, and Steve Jobs asked Xerox if they could have the Alto 88's OS (and the mouse). Bill Gates then Stole the Mac design when Apple gave a prototype of the Mac to MS so they could write applications for it. If you think that's the same thing, you should be the last one throwing the word "ignorance" around.

And yes, the Instinct is a copy of the IPhone.