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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hal Rubel who wrote (16710)	2/22/1999 6:44:00 PM
From: Bob Duncan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

Windows falls a bit short in the plug and play arena. If you stick in something as simple as a floppy disk, nothing happens. The Windows OS is too stupid to know what to do with it... Hal, what are you talking about? My floppy was detected just fine when I had it replaced. Are you sure you plugged the power connection into the drive? Please do not post garbage like this. Windows 98 only has "trouble" with strange mixes of legacy and cutting edge hardware. Unless you were plugging in a 360K Floppy or something bizzare from the early 80's I do not see how the floppy was not detected.

To: Hal Rubel who wrote (16710)	2/22/1999 6:48:00 PM
From: denni	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

Ballmer sounds alarm zdnet.com By Mary Jo Foley, Sm@rt Reseller February 19, 1999 9:00 AM ET If you thought Microsoft Corp.'s Steve Ballmer would be little more than a rubber-stamp president, think again. Ballmer--not CEO Bill Gates--is sounding the alarm about what's wrong at Microsoft. And the list of troubles ailing Microsoft may be more serious than you thought. Ballmer, flanked by Gates, led a Microsoft managers meeting the first week of December at which he outlined his five-point plan for getting the Redmond, Wash., company back on track, according to documentation of the meeting. Besides emphasizing the importance of Microsoft getting back in touch with its customers, Ballmer also discussed strategies for revitalizing Microsoft's planning, prioritizing, engineering and leadership policies. "We're at a very important point for the company's long-term health and viability," Ballmer told the 100 or so managers in attendance. "If we don't do the right thing, we just won't be in a great place three to four years from now." Ballmer's remarks went far beyond the "we are in a position where we can be replaced" statements the company's top brass have been making in a variety of forums. Ballmer expressed concerns both about Microsoft's oldest franchise (Windows) and its newest (The Microsoft Network). Microsoft's path toward unifying Windows NT and Windows 9x has been rocky, he acknowledged. And the company's "Darwinian" strategy of pitting one development team against another and allowing the best technology to triumph has gotten Microsoft in hot water, he admitted. Gates concurred: "We've asked the Windows group to do too many things. We've asked IMG [Interactive Media Group] to do too many things. It's not clear which ones absolutely had to get done. It's kind of sad, but we have to recognize our finite capabilities." Ballmer said he came to these conclusions following one-on-one meetings with the company's top managers through the end of last year. When Pete Higgins, a group vice president, announced he was taking indefinite leave last November, Ballmer stepped in as acting director of IMG and supplemented his regular briefings with customers with closed-door, no-holds-barred gripe sessions with Microsoft managers. He got an earful, especially about Microsoft's increasing quality problems on the engineering and test fronts. Microsoft's failure to "scale up" its approach to building and testing has set the company back, he claimed. Steve Ballmer "I was shocked at the number of people who told me I should go to a bug triage meeting or sit in a build lab for a day," Ballmer said. "We need to recommit to software engineering as a discipline." Ballmer banged the simplicity drum as well, telling those in attendance that Microsoft's products are "too much hassle," incorporating too many unwieldy features that aren't meeting customer needs. But it's not just tools and technologies that Microsoft needs to fix, Ballmer acknowledged. "We need to make sure our great people are doing what they do best--not to try to stretch them or have them do things that aren't their top skills," he told the company's managers. "If we don't, two things will happen: We won't build products that win, and it won't be fun to build these products, anyway. We will get into what I'd call a vicious downward spiral." In a question-and-answer session following Gates' and Ballmer's remarks, Microsoft managers peppered the duo with questions on some of Microsoft's less-than-popular practices. The problems with Microsoft's publicly stated plans to move to a unified Windows NT code base, as well as common storage, file system and shell models across product lines, topped a number of managers' lists. Gates acknowledged that Microsoft may have prematurely moved almost all of its Windows 9x developers off Windows to work on NT. Now the company is looking at releasing one or more "minor" Windows 9x upgrades before it moves to an entirely NT-kernel-based product family, Microsoft officials have said. Nonetheless, Gates defended Microsoft's unification strategy. "Unification is how we will reduce the complexity of our products," he said. Ballmer isn't throwing up his hands in defeat after eight weeks and 150 hours of meetings. "People are frustrated about decisions that aren't being made, priorities that aren't getting set, tools that aren't being invested in," he said. "But they are frustrated about things that we can address, not the malaise of the world." A Microsoft spokeswoman acknowledged that the company held a "routine" meeting during the first week of December for senior-level managers. Microsoft holds such meetings two or three times a year, she said, so that "Bill and Steve can communicate their business challenges."