McClam,
Rudedog seems to feel MS's products could, should, and must
become better,...
I agree with Rudedog. Whether it will happen, however, is an
open question, and I won't pretend to have the answer. I'm
pretty skeptical, though, because of MSFT's mgmt. and their
history.
IMO, MSFT's vision of computing was molded by their experience with
IBM & they still have some of IBM's old habits. Beyond that,
they have no credible answer for thin client technology, which
will soon provide cheaper, equally powerful computing appliances
for home & office, and they have no answer for Java.
In the unlikely event that anyone in Redmond would listen to
my advice, I would say: stick to the knitting and produce high-
quality, portable, personal productivity applications & make
that the core business. Forget about high-end servers &
enterprise systems & trying to continually bind users of your
applications to your O/S & ever-bigger PC hardware.
Thin clients have already dropped PC margins drastically, so
that 40% of those sold now are under $1000. That trend will
continue to gouge the margins of PC hardware, peripheral &
software makers.
I can't comment on MSFT's other businesses and their prospects
for success, because I don't know anything about them. I
wouldn't buy MSFT at the current p/e of 50+, and I think it
will be difficult to increase as long as their eps is around
$2.00/year. However, if MSFT is betting the farm on NT 5.0,
I would sell now.
JMHO, not intended to be investment advice.
cheers,
cherylw |
