Us Linux folks have been waiting 10 years for this. The day that Microsoft started eating the OEM's lunch. At some point they will have to compete against Microsoft. Since Microsoft gets Windows for "free" the only way to match the price point on the hardware will be to load an OS that costs them less than Windows.

With the Windows 8 App store it looks like Valve has figured out they had better have an exit strategy for leaving the Windows PC Market. Hopefully the OEMs like Dell, HP and Lenovo will figure this out soon as well.

They are hoping it wont be in the red, the want to break even, get their head above the "surface" of the water to not drown?

Here Here!

Price is going to be a big factor. The Nexus 7 is $200 and does alot. How much? Enough to make some one wonder if they want to buy 3 Nexus 7's for them, their spouse, and a kid, OR do they want to buy on Surface or other Winsows 8 tablet at $600 plus? The only way that Microsoft adds "value" for an OS that is priced at $50 or $150 is on expensive hardware. If you put Win 8 on the Nexus 7 it would be a $300 tablet. You have to hide the price of Win 8 in the cost of overpriced hardware.

That is not to say there is not value havind a keyboard as well as front and rear facing cameras. Microsoft is betting that someone will look at a Nexus 7 wth no keyboard, front facing camera, scratchable screen at $200 and pass it up for Win 8 tablet at $600. Remember, this is WinRT at $600 and there are more Andriod apps than Win 8 apps and you must trust Microsoft with your cloud info better than you trust google.

The market to me looks like Android owns the sub $400 market, Apple owns the $500 to $900 market and those that absoletely must run a Windows desktop on a tablet might spend $900 + on a Win 8 tablet ... unless they would prefer a $900 Win 7 tablet. After all, one you hit that price point the hadware is goog enough to make Win 7 sing.

Be serious, the last time the justice department step in and the wheels of justice finished milling their product, every cometitor was locked out or dead due to Microsofts practices.

Betting on the DOJ stepping in, in time is NOT a good business plan.

Ah, but can she get socks?

Yes, but the key there is to go where the puck is going to be. Microsoft has been a day late and a dollar short at ending up where the puck is. I think is is much more likely that they are going to guess at where the puck will be, but they will end up no where near where the puck is going.

It is an interesting question. Look at Steve Jobs in 1984 and where he thought computers would be by now. Did he have a good idea where things were going? Or did he decide where he wanted to go, and bent our will to his?

It has happened a time or two for me. Distro provide version 1.32 from 3 years ago. Version 1.85 just came out on the website with a feature I need. And the guy botched the source tarball. No Makefile and nothing that would allow autogen to work either. Sure versions .1 to 1.84 all have tarballs with Makefiles. Which leaves you having to wait till they get around to fixing it.

But I will give you your point. No one does it on purpose. It is a statistical anomaly.

For instance, domain managed applications and login, resilient file sharing, group policies, etc. If any of these items surface (pun!), in the new product, there will be at least a corporate buying spree.

Really? None of those features will be available on the WinRT tablet that will be out in October. It will be January or February when the over a thousand dollar we don't know the battery life Windows 8 tablet hits the market.

Right now MS is to interested in their own app store to care about anything else after the Windows 8 launch.

I noticed it the first time I thought about sitting down in the bathroom with it.

These are the same people that predicted the massive rise to hundreds of millions of Netbooks after the first Netbooks hit the market. From 2009 we can see that their 2012 predictions are off. They did not see Microsoft killing the Netbook market. They also failed to note at the time the rise of the iPAD.

It is almost to the point that if Gartner predicts something I can be sure that is the ONE thing that won't happen.

Has the XBox really broken even? After all of the parlor games and accounting tricks?

Writing off 2 billion in repairs in 2009 for what will happen in 2010-2012 and only call it a loss for 2009. How can it be a "profit" it you make 500 million but paid out 600 million in repairs that year. It is like saying we turned a profit this year because of "revenue" in the sense of a loan we gave our self 2 years ago.

For years every Xbox was sold at a loss, then every XBox360 was sold at a loss. Then there were the repairs for defective XBox and XBox 360's. Multiple repairs. With development costs, advertising, etc, we are at somewhere between 8 to 10 billion in losses.

Plus all the other losses from that division. Such as Zune, Windows CE, Windows Mobile, etc. You are heading toward 20 billion. At this point, how many years will the Xbox 360 have to be profitable before they actually break even?

Then we can talk BING! Windows Live and MSN. which all loose money as well.

You could just as easily justify the one-button mouse. The problem is, after getting used to a 2 or 3 button mouse going back to a one button mouse bothers you.

After becoming used to being able to control the volume with the scroll wheel, Windows feels primitive making me have to click, wait, then scroll.

Why cant you mouse over the volume status in the system tray and roll your scroll wheel to change your volume? Linux has had it for over a decade.

Really Microsoft, people would not mind it you implement this feature.

Question: Are we not men?

Answer: We are not men, we are Devo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRguZr0xCOc

Yeah, that is exactly the problem traditional educational institutions will have with it.

One thing is this stuff does not change, mathematics, chemistry, biology, book keeping, etc really has not changed. A very good book and video lecture should be as good in 20 years as it is now. If they spend time improving and adding material instead of just ditching everything and going with new material every few years like your typical college program does, they will be able to build something incredible.

It was only a community college that I attended. But it was pretty useless. There was the books, I was expected to read them. I could buy "for dummies" books that would be better to learn from. Then there was the classroom instruction, which was repeating what the book said. If you did not understand something from the book, the instructor might help. If something in the book inspired you to ask a more advanced question. Sorry, they instructor would not answer, it might confuse the slower students. It turns out the books are there for you to read, and to provide tests to prove that you read the book. The instructors are there to proctor the tests and grade the work.

Khan does not have to do much to do better than the current system at teaching students. Since he does not have to worry about real estate, sports, trustees, textbook publishers, unions and tenure he can focus on really teaching students instead of making money for everyone vested in doing things the way it has always been done.