For a number of years I was a loyal Dell buyer. Then I had two bum Dell machines and am no longer so loyal. The two desktops at home are Dells, still running like champs, but this machine is an HP laptop. I had one Acer which was chintzy and nothing but trouble.

The Apple ads were classic, agreed. They painted it as hip vs. square and buyers agreed. Maybe the well will run dry some day but Apple has succeeded in promoting itself as the cool company for three decades now. They break ground again and again and are very effective in letting people know it.

>Microsoft continues to feel pressure from Linux as a server, but Linux desktop is dead. Vista is dead. Users are quickly moving to Win7. IMO, Vista was a great product. Microsoft totally missed on the marketing side of it. Apple made huge inroads with their anti Vista ads. If Microsoft would have made two or three well placed ads explaining why Vista had the changes it did, things would have been different.
>
>>Agree with most of the points, but the flip side is that Linux
>>through price pressure contiues to lower prices for MS products.
>>Vista has shown MS that customers are not jumping on new offerings
>>and subscription models are hard to establish
>
>My last four or five PCs have been from Dell. On my most recent purchase, I got Win7 Home, but replaced it with Ultimate as I already had a license for it. There were a couple of drivers I was having trouble finding and called Dell Tech support. They did their job, but it was really annoying that the support guy didn't want to budge from his script.
>
>>Are you bullish for Dell as a company ? And not much current success in the non x86 area there as well.
>
>
>Google won't make back the purchase price through Motorolla or Android revenue. But I don't think they care. They have lots of cash.
>
>>Did not think so - but was surprized by the size of the raised ante via Motorola ;-)
>
>
>Go do some research on Microsoft's compliance with HTML 5 standards and you'll be surprised. They're very, very close to it and IE10 speed is impressive. We just need to keep in mind that the HTML 5 standard is not yet official and no company is fully compliant at this point.
>
>There are several high-level, publically visible people inside Microsoft that are pushing for web standard compliance and openness. I don't see that changing.
>
>>Given MS checkered history on following standards,
>>the question IMHO is will the (nowadays smaller, but still sizable) benefit of better dev tools
>>be felt only for MS targets or be browser-encompassing ?
>>SL dead-ending on non Win-OS is only the latest in this pattern.
>>
>>So why assume they will change their demonstrated behaviour knack ?
>>C# is much better than java and might make up for the hightened back-end cost
>>for Azure servers instead of Linux - but the risk of willfully offering third rate expierience on
>>other browsers or some other lock-in strategies turns me away from MS nowadays.
>>
>>my 0.0001€
>>
>>thomas