Nickname: caine

Review: Profit margin: 28.45%; Operating margin: 37.2%; Revenue growth: 16.2%; Operating cash flow: $14.4 billion; zero debt. Total cash on hand: $31.10 billion. What I really want to know is when is reality going to set in for most of you. It's a very good company against almost every benchmark, yet because Bill doesn't walk on water it's a dog. People get real -- it is the computer standard across the globe and that is not changing anytime soon. The big corporations can whisper open source or Red Hat or Firefox or whatever but they will still not beat the winner in terms of customers, profits and usage. Now yes the market maybe a little more mature than the heyday of the 70s and 80s, but this is a rock solid organization that will be around profitably for a good length of time to come. It's a buy.

Date reviewed: Jul 26, 2006 7:19 PM

Nickname: phantom

Review: The fundamentals are great, but this is a company that has always been a follower - look at any of its products. It has succeeded in the past because of the wide acceptance of Windows and to an extent Office. New versions of these products do not seem to have any new features that are essential, but they cost a lot more and Microsoft's stance on DRM makes the products even more unpopular. My next system will be Unix and OpenOffice driven and I suspect that many corporate IT departments are thinking along the same lines too. By the way, I am a Microsoft shareholder - but I wish I wasn't.

Date reviewed: Jul 26, 2006 10:55 AM

Nickname: Bib

Review: Your friends must have been at a different MGX meeting than I was at! The future's so bright I gotta wear shades.

Date reviewed: Jul 25, 2006 12:34 AM

Nickname: manager_tcs

Review: I believe Microsoft usually loves to rally big starting about three months before the launch of a new Windows. I think they will have huge numbers from Windows Vista. Lots of people have been putting off buying hardware until Vista is out.

Date reviewed: Jul 24, 2006 9:00 PM

Nickname: wise guy

Review: Probably the best way to unlock Microsoft's intrinsic values (e.g. brand name, technologies, etc) is to break it up into manageable pieces. Unfortunately, Bill Gates has been stubbornly resisting that. Perhaps with a few more years of frustrating growth and stagnant stock price, Bill and Steve Ballmer will come their own senses.

Date reviewed: Jul 24, 2006 7:23 PM

Nickname: objectivitywins

Review: Profit margin: 28.45%; Operating margin: 37.2%; Revenue growth: 16.2%; Operating cash flow: $14.4 billion; zero debt; recently completed buybacks amounting to tens of billions of dollars. Total cash on hand: $31.10 billion. "Surely a sell"? No, not surely. I put about 7% of my assets into Microsoft today, when I usually don't put more than 4% into any 1 stock. This is for the long term.

Date reviewed: Jul 24, 2006 3:11 PM

Nickname: TCO

Review: Surely a sell. Gloomy news from Microsoft staffers who attended their MGB company meet last week. It's still a great company & Ray Ozzie is a big win. But life looks much harder in 2007. Strong competitors now on all fronts. Nothing reported by way of really big ideas for future new business, capable of profit levels comparable with declining mainstays, Office & XP. No big profits from Xbox 360 or iPod device. In the next year, there will be brief upward blips of market sentiment, eg when Vista launches. But trends are bad--ie., low morale, following recent & coming re-orgs, with moves of key staff to competitors. And although current server sales are good, that business & also EU Vista launch are now under threat following recent EU case, leading to weakening disclosures of info. And MSFT will now operate with one hand tied behind its back, according to its new anti-competitive business code. Likely result: significant decline in profitability on all fronts & hence a smaller MSFT.

Date reviewed: Jul 23, 2006 6:48 AM