Some insight please. How did they rip off the consumers? I'm using Windows 7 and I'm very happy with myself as a consumer. And all of their products in general.

I didn't mind Vista, but 7 is a ton better. The new task bar is incredibly handy.

Only turned about a 14 billion dollar profit in one of the worst economic climates we have seen since the great depression. Yep an absolute train wreck. Could things have been better, yep, no doubt about it, but I will take 14 billion in profit on 58 billion in revenue any day while many companies have lost millions, if not billions of dollars during the same time frame. You should get all that hate out of your heart.

well said, hutch.

I just don't get some people on here.
Everything microsoft does is hated attacked from all sides.
It really is kinda pathetic.

I use xp, my girlfriend uses Vista and my dad uses win 7 on his new laptop. All three operating systems perform admirably, given their respective release technology.

The xbox 360 is succeeding at all levels and MS has demonstrably improved reliability by several orders of magnitude.
The 360 has kept up with the ps3 this year, despite the launch of the slim sku and a concurrent pricedrop. This could have been the end for the 360, yet it isn't. In fact, the 360 recently outsold the ps3 in NA. Honestly, who was expecting that?

MS has not had a record breaking year, but it has performed quite well, given the financial crisis, esepcially in the US.

Why don't we all stop hating MS for a while.
They make good software that we all use every single day.

If people really hate MS that much, then I would suggest they stop using MS products and then shut up about it.
That's not hard is it?

I know some use mac and someuse linux, although not many or microsoft would have such a huge market share. There is no doubt Microsoft is not a fuzzy warm company. They are in business for their stockholders. And belived it or not, now that they pay a nice dividend, the fact that the stock price isn't all that high is not that big of a deal. Most of the large stockholders have owend microsoft for many years and had their stock split multiple times. Most people on this site actually think that a stock price of 30 dollars vs say google at 500 dollars is a nock on microsoft, of course they don't understand that Microsoft has billions of more shares out on the market, so their market cap is bigger. It is N4G so of course they don't understand that. They think cuz of ps3's late year domination over the entire world means microsoft some how had a bad year, or the fact that vista was not a huge success, and 7 came out so soon means that microsoft is doomed. lol just read a stock report and see how many billions of dollars they have just sittin there while another favorite company is consistantly loosing billions. hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

To those people, it doesn't matter what MS brings to the table, as they will find a reason to hate. I don't need to point you out here, everyone knows who it is here. Let's just say it is one of the topmost posts here.

Never the less, it seems no matter what MS does it never catches a break. Considering MS unified the graphical user interface on Office applications and showed why a familiar interface is so important to users. Even to this day, I still find popular applications that lack this obvious design.

Finally, I want to add that it doesn't matter who invented it, but rather who makes it useful!!!

The Wii wasn't the first attempt at motion control, it was just the first one that made it useful and mainstream. The DVD wasn't the first optical disc technology for video (laser disc preceded it), but it was the first that was practical among other reasons.

@hutch
Yeah, stock price can be manipulated (or should I say diluted) by the number of shares issued. Anyone that looks at a company and valuates it based on the stock price i.e. Google is $400 and MS is $30 have no business investing!

"I didn't mind Vista, but 7 is a ton better."

Agreed. Ran Vista x64 from the gate, my only problem was itunes but a year later it was working.

I just installed Windows 7 Ultimate in a 7 year old computer today, it feels like I reinstalled XP. True story.

They fact they managed to release a very expensive OS this year that still has far too many issues and comes with no Office Suite is hardly an achievement. If so then props go to Ubuntu for having released free and much more solid, virus resistant Operating Systems with free Office. Yes, that is the plural version. They released Jackalope and Koala this year.