MacBU's 'Crazy' Eddie Deal?

OpenOffice $0

A penny saved is a penny earned.

Have a nice holiday;-)

I wonder what percentage of Apple PCs run Microsoft Office.

I'd like to do the math to see how much revenue Microsoft's MacBU generates per quarter.

I suspect that it's greater than $1 billion per quarter.

"For $55.99 plus tax after rebates, someone who buys Office 2004 Student and Teacher Edition can get a product valued at almost $500..." and worth $49.95

Great year MSFT. Just great... heh heh heh

That's a shame. I feel your pain, softees. Your management screwed you all the while telling you how good you're feeling.

http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9821120-16.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=TheOpenRoad
November 21, 2007 4:05 PM PST
Scary news for Microsoft in HP's earnings call
Posted by Matt Asay

HP never saw a "Vista moment at any time over the past year" declared HP CEO Mark Hurd in yesterday's earnings call. Think about what that means for HP, and what it means for Microsoft. As it turns out, it means essentially the same thing:

Microsoft's dominance of the PC industry may well be fading.

For Microsoft, this is a Very Bad Thing. For everyone else on the planet, it is a Very Good Thing.

Including HP. As CIO.com reports, HP's growth is increasingly coming from developing nations:

HP was happily announcing that revenue for its personal systems group has spiked to $10.1 billion; that's up 30 percent compared to fourth quarter a year ago. But that success sure isn't because businesses planned a Vista upgrade and refreshed systems at the same time.

On the contrary, Vista did not play into HP's sales uptick, Hurd declared. That uptick is all about sales in emerging markets including China, he says. In fact, HP says that revenue from Brazil, Russia, India and China increased 37 percent; it's now nearing 10 percent of HP's $104.3 billion in sales.

Think about that. These are markets that don't need Vista, that have no institutional memory of Windows (over the Mac or Linux). These are markets that are wide open for real competition (and real innovation).

Again, this is great news for every person on the planet...except Microsoft shareholders.

I think this is an awesome deal and every Mac user should take advantage of it. The MacBU is introducing some cool stuff in this release, the Elements Gallery looks really intuitive and more user friendly than iWorks user interface.

""I'm going to be doing my rounds this Black Friday at the various retailers, and I expect Office to be flying off the shelves as a result of this special promotion—assuming Microsoft gets the word out," [Chris] Swenson said."

Well, that's what you're here for, isn't it Joe?

I'm happily Office-free now, but you'd have to be some kind of moron not to see what a good deal this is for those who, for whatever reason, require Office.

Funny how MS has to turn to Office in a bid to keep people on their platform. No sales on Vista, since no one would buy it.

OpenOffice is free. That is far better value than whatever M$ is offering.

The problem, however, is perception. M$ is using its market dominance to push sales of their product. OpenOffice has none of that monopoly advantage. It has a miniscule marketing "buidget" in comparison to M$ Office. OpenOffice will always be the underdog, but it can make inroads among those customers who are more conscious about cost-effectiveness.

You can all download OpenOffice from openoffice.org.

Stop the whinning already!!!. Market dominance has little, if anything to do with Microsoft's Office dominance. Office is a superior product and people want it. Period.
Microsoft competes, improves it's products continously in markets where it does not have dominance nor the best product. I haven't heard Microsoft whine for Nokia's dominance in the mobile market just to mention one example. Microsoft did not whine when it had 1% of the Server market which was dominated by IBM Mainframes and Unix, not so long ago. It competed, improved their offerings, worked hard to change the perception of being a Desktop only company, and now has a respectable server market. I can name many other areas, where Microsoft did same. Enough whinning already. It's pathetic . If OpenOffice is good enough for you.Fine!Use it, let the others use MS Office.

I hope this isn't a bunch of B.S. because the promo link at MSN's Mactopia site gives an error when trying to download the rebate info. Amazon's site mentions nothing about this promotion.

Typical Microsoft, promise the moon and deliver nothing.

IBM or Microsoft?(You people aren't learning yet, are you?)

... Microsoft is getting a very very late start and IBM has had since 2001 to work with VCSY technology. Now look where IBM is... and where Microsoft is not. Shareholders had better hope Microsoft settles with VCSY or you simply won't be working at these kinds of levels on the internet.

The idea here it to create a cloud structure that belongs to, is branded for and is standardized for the particular vertical that will use the cloud system.

Just as corporations owned and operated their own websites in the 90's - a revolution in outreach from the corporation to the public - corporations will be able to push their functional systems out to the public.

Just as Bill Gates predicted the internet was a fad, Steve Ballmer was predicting the web services revolution and was battered into accepting the concept for Microsoft... "only different".

Ray Ozzie has been missing for a long time and what's been rolled out in Live is by no means a tool for collaboration as Ozzie's baby Lotus has been developed into by IBM. I'll bet Oz wishes he had cast his lot with IBM instead of his currently web-challenged disfunctional family.

This is the beginning of the next age, MSFTshareholders. Either get in it for real or be ridiculed for missing the boat.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/54666-ibm-s-blue-cloud-the-tipping-point-for-enterprise-it
IBM's 'Blue Cloud': The Tipping Point for Enterprise IT
posted on: November 19, 2007
Dana Gardner

I recall a front page story I wrote for InfoWorld back in 1997. At the time there were still plenty of naysayers about whether websites were a plaything or a business tool. There was talk of clicks and mortar, and how the mortar would always determine business outcomes.

And then General Motors (GM) - the very definition of a traditional big business - unveiled an expansive website that fully embraced the Internet across its businesses. We at InfoWorld wrote about GM's embrace of the Web then as a corporate tipping point, from which there was no going back. Clicks became mainstream for businesses. Case closed.

And so it is today, with IBM's (IBM) announcement of Blue Cloud -- an approach that not only talks the services talk, but walks the services walk. We are all at the tipping point where IT will be delivered of, by and for services. If Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), Amazon (AMZN) and eBay (EBAY) can do what they do with their applications and services, then why shouldn't General Motors? Or SMB XYZ?

So the king of mainframes and distributed computing moves the value expectations yet again - to the pre-configured cloud architecture. The standards meet the management that meets the utility that gets the job done faster, better, cheaper. Slap an IBM logo on it and take it to the bank.

(more at URL)

Firefox 3 Beta 1 is a winner

http://www.itwire.com/content/view/15460/1023/

Quote from the link: "According to Mozilla's blurb: "Firefox 3 Beta 1 is based on the new Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 27 months and includes nearly 2 million lines of code changes, fixing more than 11,000 issues." That means little to me. All I'm interested in is performance, reliability, look and feel. And from what I've seen so far, Firefox 3 Beta 1 succeeds spectacularly in all areas.

Upon loading the new beta release for the first time, one thing that impressed me, aside from its blinding speed, was that Mozilla has not attempted to fiddle with the look and feel of the interface. There are changes to be sure, but if you weren't looking for them, you could easily believe you were running the previous version."

In All Fairness … Internet Explorer Still Stinks

http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2007/11/22/in-all-fairness-%e2%80%a6-internet-explorer-still-stinks/

Quote from the link: "Obviously, with IE7 Microsoft made great strides in correcting the most glaring and painful issues that plagued developers in IE6. But the unavoidable truth revealed by this reference is that Internet Explorer is still miles behind the competition."

Acer considers low-cost PC market entry

http://www.techspot.com/news/27976-acer-considers-lowcost-pc-market-entry.html

Quote from the link: "With low-cost notebooks such as Asus’ Eee PC being all the rage these days, Acer is reportedly considering to enter the emerging market. According to Acer Taiwan president Scott Lin, the company recently formed a team to begin working on projects for the sector.

But the market for low-cost PCs is still uncertain and the popularity of Linux platform is still under evaluation, according to Lin, which is why the company is still considering whether to launch any products."
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Does Acer really just want to write off the low end market? Remember Walmart selling out the new Linux computer in the first week.

Its going be Windows competing with Mac on the high end, and Linux on the low end.

Microsoft Faces Fight Against Online Office Rival

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/22/188236

Here's the real deal folks, the one that sold out in one week. Link is titled:

Wal-Mart's $199 Linux PC back in stock

http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204200535

Quotes from the link:

"Just in time for the holidays, Wal-Mart has re-stocked a Linux-based PC that sells for $199.

A check of the retailer's Web site Tuesday revealed that the Everex TC2502 Green gPC -- which had temporarily been sold out -- is now listed as "In Stock."

Linux fans and budget-minded PC shoppers could easily be fooled into thinking that the gPC is still unavailable, however. Walmart.com's main desktop page says the computer is "Coming Soon." But clicking on the gPC link reveals that it's in stock and available for purchase.

Wal-Mart introduced the gPC earlier this month but it quickly sold out online. It's "been one of the top performing desktop computers on Walmart.com," a spokesman for the company told InformationWeek last week.

The gPC is one of the first Linux-based desktop machines to be offered for sale by a major retailer. As such, it could be an indicator of open source software's potential for success in the consumer market."

These prices are pure insane:

Gosh, gOS is good

http://www.linux.com/feature/121151

Quote: "Many people still question whether Linux will ever make it fully into mainstream computer acceptance. A $199 computer now available on a major superstore's shelves just in time for Christmas might change all that. Anyone who wants a computer to just to send email and instant messages and watch YouTube videos should like the Everex gPC, which is powered by a nifty Linux distribution called gOS."

Microsoft Office under fire
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article2495951.ece
"Microsoft is in danger of loosing the Office licence fees it has milked for nearly two decades, some suggest, as customers opt for alternative subscription-based services that are hosted by providers. Its business model – built around the PC – will not survive the internet age, they argue."
“Companies don't want to buy and maintain the stack of software that the likes of Microsoft force on them.

“They want innovation, not infrastructure – why bother with costly implementations when you can subscribe to business applications in the same way that you do for other utilities like water and electricity? It’s the end of software – the tides are changing and Microsoft is losing its hold.”

Schools warned off Microsoft deal
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7063716.stm
The UK computer agency Becta is advising schools not to sign licensing agreements with Microsoft because of alleged anti-competitive practices.
The government agency has complained to the Office of Fair Trading.

It says talks with Microsoft have not resolved "fundamental concerns" about academic licensing and about Office 2007 and the Vista operating system.
And it advises them to deploy Office 2007 only "when its interoperability with alternative products is satisfactory".

In a previous report, Becta said primary schools could typically save up to 50% and secondary schools more than 20% of their ICT costs if they switched to what is known as "open source" software.
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Brazil estimates that can save 540 million using FOSS
http://www.adn.es/impresa/valencia/20071114/NWS-0674-Brasil-economizar-software-millones-dolares.html

"Brazil can save hastta million dollars (about 540 million euros) using free software in their departments, according to today announced the director of the Federal Data Processing (Serpro), Mark Mazzoni."
"The officer has pùesto as an example the Binational Itaipú hydroelectric, whose headquarters is being held in the international meeting, and shared Brazil and Paraguay. Sólo en ella se podría generar un ahorro de unos 2,26 millones de dólares (1,5 millones de euros) aplicando software libre. Only it could generate savings of about 2.26 billion dollars (1.5 billion euros) using free software."

IBM confidential project TPMD being brought out(includes VCSY's emPath)

IBM, Energy Solutions, IBMer Michael Hollingers resume regarding confidential project TPMD and VCSY's emPath software and what VCSY's CEO Richard Wade talked about with IBM's energy problems, are all converging here for those in the know.

http://www.ibm.com/Search/?q=%22TPMD%22&v=16&lang=en&cc=us&en=utf&Search=Search

Now that we know the same empath that works for VCSY's NOW Solutions in managing Human Resources can work for IBM in managing server resources. Do you know what Siteflash can do? Siteflash can rework software so once it's built for one set of work it can be repurposed for the same kind of work in a different vertical.

I love it when a plan comes together!

Joe Wilcox
Isn't it about time that you took more of a role here and stopped all the Linux and general spamming going on around here !
Not to mention all the "off the topic" comments by I-Man and Chips but to name a few.
I-Man 4 out of 21 comments
Chips 6 out of 21 comments
Marco 3 out of 21 comments

A total of 13 out of 21 comments had absolutely nothing to do with the subject of discussion.

I like how all of the posting format is the same. And the I-man spam posting can be found on other board and are word for word. I think it is one person who is making the 13 none related comments.
No they won't go away, Joe actually likes Chips and made the mistake of mentioning him in an atricle giving him credit where credit was not due. It is hard to get ride of the pigeons of you feed them. So we are stuck with the dung.
I thought a sign of defeat was panicing. One spam a board about there crazy cause seams to be a panic attack. And like all the MS shills, the linux shills get paid billions of dollars too by Linus for posting anything ant-MS.

Ha,ha!
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Vista SP1 a Performance Dud
http://exo-blog.blogspot.com/2007/11/vista-sp1-performance-dud.html
With the initial performance characteristics of Windows Vista leaving much to be desired (see our previous post on the subject), many IT organizations have put off deploying the new OS until the first service pack (SP1) is released by Microsoft early next year. The thinking goes that SP1 will address all of these early performance issues and somehow bring Windows Vista on par with - or at least closer to - Windows XP in terms of runtime performance.

Unfortunately, this is simply not the case. Extensive testing by the exo.performance.network (www.xpnet.com) research staff shows that SP1 provides no measurable relief to users saddled with sub-par performance under Vista.
Conclusions

After extensive testing of both RTM and SP1-patched versions of Windows Vista, it seems clear that the hoped-for performance fixes that Microsoft has been hinting at never materialized. Vista + SP1 is no faster than Vista from the RTM image.

Bottom Line: If you've been disappointed with the performance of Windows Vista to date, get used to it. SP1 is simply not the panacea that many predicted. In the end, it's Vista's architecture - not a lack of tuning or bug fixes - that makes it perform so poorly on systems that were "barn-burners" under Windows XP.

Online rival to Microsoft Office launches
Live Documents was developed over four years by just 32 software engineers at Bhatia's company InstaColl in Bangalore, India. The company is backed by SoftBank's Bodhi Fund.
He believes office applications delivered as a service over the Internet is the wave of the future, due to lower up front and later upgrade costs. He said, "This will do for documents what Hotmail did for e-mail. Why spend $400 on an upgrade when you can get it for free?"

"We are just a few years away from the end of the shrink-wrapped software business. By 2010, people will not be buying software," Bhatia said.
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/11/23/online-rival-microsoft-office

Neil, I think Joe let's me post here not just as a curtious to me but so that his readers can actually get to view what all is coming our way. Most everybody these days is under Non-Disclosure-Agreements, but i'm not so as an investor try and keep up for once instead of crying like a baby only to miss yet another golden opportunity!
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The TPMD thing is HUGE! The only way companies like HP and Microsoft have been able to address the environmental power issues (green) is to advise users to turn their servers off.

IBM on the other hand is able to make monitor the power use on each individual server board (and probably each individual processor on the board) using the TPMD chip and then send commands to the TPMD chip to control the processing speed and how much power the board uses. That way the management processing software (empath) can oversee the entire set of of server demands and server resources (electrical power, cooling resources and application loads) providing a much more sophisticated capability.

The reason for using empath would be to take the same set of applications NOW Solutions has glued together with empath for managing Human Resources and change the application user interface using Siteflash to use the same applications to manage the thermal and power needs for servers.

It allows a framework to be used for a different purpose without having to do all the development over again. That's what is so powerful about Siteflash.

In time IBM's method will be the only way of running servers because the industry wants an autonomous server center and not something human workers have to go around turning servers on and off during power problems.

Glad to read your post. I have been looking for more info on currency trades. Thanks