Discussing How Microsoft Can Fix Microsoft

I would love to see Microsoft communicate better. They can be very good at shutting people out, and not sharing any information.

Good ideas here. Expanding on the branding thing, I would recommend dropping Windows from the phone. It doesn't run Windows, so don't name it that. MS Phone or Zune Phone or something else is better. Or, give the OS a new brand name. Android, iOS and webOS are all like that. So get a catchy name and use it.

I’d also love to see them do what Nokia just did: Kill the extra branding. In Nokia-world this means the “Ovi” brand (meaning “door” in Finnish I’m told) will die, but who cares: “Ovi Maps” will be “Nokia Maps”, which in any case makes more sense. Microsoft should remove the Windows branding on some of its offerings. Presently, Microsoft’s naming practices are preventing consumers from forming an affiliation with individual products, all to the point of extending the width and depth of the Windows-brand penumbra. But that’s just stupid; it’s Microsoft Marketing F-ing up everything with this Windows Everywhere-thing. Just stop it.
Only an idiot would come up with a name such as “Windows Live Essentials 2011”. It should have been “Microsoft Creative”, or perhaps “Microsoft Life” or whatever really – just as long as the name actually said something about the specific product and what you could do or be with it. Same goes for “Windows Live Photo Gallery”, which should have been “Microsoft Photo”. And really the list goes on. Seriously, someone should write a Ph.D. report on why Microsoft fails to use meaningful product names.
And the, when everything has been given a sensible name, Microsoft should promise not to include years or version numbers into the actual product title. It shouldn’t be “Office 2011”, it should just be “Office”; and it should be updated every sixth month. Simplicity - for the win.
On a side note, this also ties in nicely with your point Paul, about portability (a thing, let’s not forget, with somewhat of a priority back in the day when Cutler & Co. wrote NT): Everything should be readily available on Windows, Mac and perhaps even *nix-systems (Intel) as well as smartphones and tablets (ARM).
Oh yeah, and then Microsoft should do a Neutron Jack on the entire organization: Kill of every major product that wasn’t number one or two in the market.

Quit dropping promising products prematurely. Microsoft never even allowed the very cool Courier tablet to reach consumers even though all the reviews I read about the device were positive.

It pulled the plug on Kin (and all the cool stuff that came with it) after just a few months and did not include a lot of the cool things about Kin in Windows Phone 7.

I am sure that there are other examples where Microsoft has chosen to abandon products instead of rethinking strategy. But sometimes a failure is not a complete failure and they need to learn to skim off the successful ideas and incorporate those elsewhere.

As it is now, it seems they are throwing the baby out with the bath water on a regular basis.

"You're a business software maker, deal with it."

Bingo. It's their core market, so FOCUS on it. The main thing Apple did with the "I'm a Mac/PC" commercials was to sucker punch Microsoft into trying to be Apple and fighting the fight that Apple wanted. Stop doing it. Be Microsoft, not an imitation of Apple; you're not any good at it.

"Simplify"

Somewhere the value of "choice" needs to be reconciled with simplicity. The supersite table of all the Windows 7 versions was roundly mocked by me and other Mac users. No one WANTS that mess. ONE OS release would be great, but this is unlikely, if only because of the Intel/Arm duality that is coming with Windows 8.

"Learn better branding"

Gods above, YES. The counter-examples are legion: The mock iPhone funeral; the horrible "dancing" at the Microsoft store; the "If Microsoft did the iPod Packaging video. Learn how to DO this. For God's sake, hire a f*cking consultant, it's not like you don't have the money.

"Fire Steve Ballmer"

Totally obvious. The guy is a disaster. When Steve Jobs says "Microsoft has no taste", he means Ballmer.

And I'll add a new one:

Give up all remnants of the "Windows Everywhere" nonsense. No one wants it. The market has decided. Give it up. What may be tolerable on the desktop is absurd on a Phone or a tablet. And along with this, give up the embarrasingly lame attempts to brand everything with "Windows" this or that. "Windows Phone 7 series". Really? Zune failed as a brand, but Xbox succeeded. See? It can be done; it doesn't need to be "Microsoft Windows 8 Tablet Enterprise Edition".

Lastly, since I'm no fan of Microsoft, I have to say that I don't care nearly as much as Paul does. The "good old days" when Microsoft rode roughshod over everyone else were NOT the good old days; it was a horrible time of stagnation in the whole industry. Apple and Google saved you all from that. The only reason to even care about Microsoft in this was is to provide a counter to Google and Apple; their dominion would be no better than what we suffered through with Microsoft.

To attract consumers better I think Microsoft should make better hardware! Computers and mobile devices are already an accessory and a piece of furniture in your home. Microsoft sell licenses to companies that just do not have a sense of good design. There are simply not any devices that run Microsoft software which can compete with Apple's great design, durable hardware made of good quality material.

The software of computers and mobile devices is not the whole experience. Consumers want devices that have great design and great durability so they won't break. I think consumers sometimes even critisize Microsoft and Windows because they associate them with poorly built computers.

Should Microsoft make the computers and devices themselves? I don't know. Maybe they should partner with Apple and make a MacBook och MacBook Air with Windows keyboard and Windows preinstalled - they could call it WinBook and WinBook Air. I would buy that computer immediately! By this I want to say that there simply aren't any options for Windows users to buy a good quality computer. It is impossible to find a Windows laptop with a decent touchpad! No matter how good Windows is and will be in the feature the Windows experience gets ruined by cheeply built computers. And to attract consumers that is one of their biggest problems right now.

I really like the idea of Sinofsky replacing Ballmer. He has done amazing stuff with Office, Windows, and IE. The regular cadence of releases is not "Internet Speed" but it's efficient and doesn't disappoint.

Plus, he seems to be able to herd cats... which is exactly what is needed to get all the pieces of MS to work together.

Microsoft makes just about everything. The only problem they have is a marketing/brand issue. Just look.

Google Search / Bing
Gmail / Hotmail
Google Docs / Office Web Apps
iTunes / Zune
iPhone / Windows Phone
Dropbox / Windows Live Mesh
Firefox-Chrome-Safari / IE
OSX / Windows
Linux / Windows Server
Amazon and Google Cloud Music Player / Windows Home Server
PS3 Wii / XBox360

Now I know a lot of you will say WTF with that last one, but let me explain. It is an incredible waste of bandwidth for you to be streaming all your music from Google or Amazon when WHS can do it from your house. WHS will even transcode the videos so they can stream properly.

The only actual product they are missing is a good tablet based on Windows Phone and an Apple TV like device.

Great article.

I completely agree with the branding subject, sometimes it is embarrassing to use the names in public.

For example, Bing, as you said, is still unknown as to whether it is a good name or not. Maybe its just weird to say "Bing it" instead of "Google it" is because Google is still the defacto standard in search, so maybe I just feel dirty being a rebel :P

But Windows Live Hotmail? I understood that when Windows Live Search was still around, but Windows Live is dead. No one says "Windows Live Hotmail," just Hotmail, so why bother? Windows Live SkyDrive? Just kill Windows Live once and for all.

I personally believe Windows 8 will be a compartmentalized version of Windows, which is why they will be able to put Windows on tablets. Under the hood will be the same basic thing, whether it be a phone, a desktop, a tablet, or even the Xbox. The only major difference would be the interface itself, which would be another component. Then developers could pretty much make a single underpinning for an application, and make a different interface for each device. This is all of course me dreaming, but there is nothing wrong with that.

I do think it is time for Steve Ballmer to go as well, while he hasn't exactly ran the company into the ground, he certainly hasn't excelled the company either. Microsoft needs a visionary... Someone who has great ideas, but not unrealistic ideas either. The ideas need to push the boundaries of technology, but only an amount thats realistic. Who should replace Steve? I have no idea... It needs to be someone who is a good speaker, someone who is down to earth (but you know, still a freakin' genius), who has a vision for what Microsoft could be, and knows how to get that vision accomplished. If Steve Jobs could turn Apple around when they were headed into the ground, someone should be able to make Microsoft head into the future with massive leaps and bounds -- after all, they have some $40 billion in the bank.

As for splitting Microsoft up, I don't think they actually need to do that literally, but more metaphorically (I guess). Microsoft has dozens of buildings on their main campus, and undoubtedly everywhere else. These buildings are all for specific divisions/departments in Microsoft, at least usually. The Xbox has its very own building, Windows probably has a massive one as well, if not multiple, and so on and so forth.

Why don't they then make those buildings act like individual companies? They would all work for the same "parent" company (Microsoft), but they would not report to one another, nor would any have any authority over one another -- they all decide their very own fate. As you have said Paul, new projects should be either given a timeline (must turn so much of a profit within 3 years), or a budget (and after the money is gone, and if the project is not making so much money, they are done).

This wouldn't mean each "company" couldn't interact with one another, or work with one another, but it would at least prevent a dominant product from killing other projects "just 'cause." Could you imagine where Microsoft would be today if that ActiveX Office would have actually been allowed to continue? Maybe it would have failed, but maybe it would have been a major success. Office 365 could have been created years ago, and cloud computing could have been much more by today. But no... The Office team didn't want to allow that because it was a threat. As you have said Paul, Microsoft pumps out awesome and amazing products with their backs against the wall, and artificial competition inside the company would cause that to happen ALL THE TIME.

What's the worst that could have happened with an ActiveX Office? It's not like they couldn't have monetized it by offering it to companies for a subscription fee, or offer a basic one for free like Office Web Apps. Office Web Apps can do a decent amount of stuff, but Office on the desktop still has thousands of features that Office Web Apps cannot do. Besides, we all know how much Microsoft loves subscription software because it provides a constant stream of money, and ActiveX Office could have provided such a service.

I of course agree with the "move more quickly," but I would think by making each division/project being seen as its own "company" (without all the management too, of course!) would cause there to be competition within the company, causing the competing products to want to be "No. 1" and would naturally cause them to move more quickly. The underdog (say Office Web Apps) would want to move very quickly to show that they have a good idea, and that it will be successful, and show off what they can do compared to the top dog (which would be Office). Office Web Apps would continue to be updated to compete with Office as best as it can, this would cause Office to become worried, and do the same. Though I can see why Office may not want to move quickly, because it is an enterprise product. But you get the idea.

Products need to be merged in some cases too, as stated. There is Zune, Media Center, and Windows Media Player... If these could all be combined into one product, they would probably be able to play any audio/video file you could throw at it, but since they are all working separately, they will likely "reinvent" the wheel when one product already accomplished such a goal. I know that is kind of contradictory from what I said about making each division/product its own "company," but Zune, Media Center, and Media Player are all products for the desktop to provide a way to play media, where Office Web Apps aims to provide Office on the Web to anyone, and Office on the desktop aims to provide it for, well, the desktop -- to different goals.

Finally, Microsoft should CERTAINLY port port port! You are a dang software company, so make software regardless of the platform! Do what Amazon does with the Kindle... They have a device maker which aims to make the Kindle the best device, whereas the Kindle Store people try to make the Kindle Store available on every device possible, and look at how successful they are! Its competition within the company, like I say Microsoft should do as well.

Oh, I guess I forgot another thing: Stop making everything so dang expensive. It's like $200 for a full Windows 7 Home Premium license, which is ludicrous! I don't know what the price should be, all I know is that if you make a product cheaper, it will actually cause more people to buy it, increasing sales. There is a point at which the price is too low and you won't recover the losses, but you can indeed make more money by lowering the price of products.

Oh! And ONE more! So Bing says they are a "decision engine" and they make fun of the other search engines (Google) for being a bunch of confusing links, that makes it hard to find what you are looking for... Well, Microsoft confuses people with all the different product versions. For example: Windows 7 Starter, Basic, Premium, Professional, Ultimate, Enterprise. I know Starter is only available to OEM's and Basic is only for third-world countries, but still, 4 products? I understand that home users have different needs than businesses, and vice versa, but 2 should do it! Why did they stray so far away from Windows XP Home Edition and Windows XP Professional? That was awesome, and enough! Why do I need to spend some $100+ for BitLocker and a few other things? I bought Windows, so give me Windows! Dangling little features in front of customers to try and get them to spring for a product which costs so much more but doesn't in reality offer much more than what every product should entail.

Microsoft doesn't have multiple versions of Windows Phone, do they? That would be insane, and I swear if Microsoft ever did something such as that with a phone (or even the tablet), I am seriously going to have to rethink Microsoft as a whole.

Phew! DONE!

One more thing on the subject of breaking up Microsoft. I'm for it, sort of, but I want to explain why.

Microsoft, as Paul has pointed out many times, has one successful business model and two successful products. The model is the "Wintel" alliance and the PC vendors who sell Wintel. Microsoft has tried and tried to replicate that model elsewhere (I'm sure we all remember "Plays for Sure") and it has failed every time. Applying this model to phones is not setting the world afire either. The products associated with that model are, of course, Windows and Office.

NOTHING ELSE from Microsoft has ever had any real success. (Right, there are minor exceptions, but this is big brush). The problem with the famous "deep pockets" of Microsoft is that they subsidize bad ideas for far too long. There is a difference between incubating a new product using some of that Windows/Office revenue and keeping a turkey on life support for WAY too long.

I don't know if Microsoft needs to be broken up or just to spin off/out some of the products that it develops. Just knowing you have to stand on your own two feet gives a certain discipline and focus. If you know that the Windows revenues won't be there to bail you out you'll act differently.

Four things:
1. Integrate existing services and platforms better
2. Embrace other platforms.
3. Focus on core strengths, Sofware, and quit trying to out Apple,Apple or out Google, Google be the Microsoft you can.
4. Extensebility
5. Turn Competetors into partners and Partners into competators.
6. Retain Freedom of choice

I know many of these things seem contradictory but they are actually not.

First, Microsoft has a lot of very powerful tools and services but they largely do not interact with each other as easily as they should. THIS should be priority number one. They need to polish and integrate each and every one in a way that creates a seamless ecosystem. Make every peice the best peice it can be but make it even better when used togeather to get people to want to use the rest of the ecosystem.

Two, they need to make thier products available on other platforms. This may seem like it would kill the crown jewel Windows but I don't think it will. Windows is strong enough to stand on it own. MS needs to get over protecting windows and attack each sector on it own merit.
They need Office on Android,iOS,Mac OSX (and Maybe even linux). This will not hurt Windows proper much at all and would make Office more money.
They need to have Visual Studio target Mac OSX, iOS, Android and Linux and maybe even run on MAC OSX Once again this will not hurt Widnows and may turn VS into a multi billion dollar business vs a billion dollar business.

Three. Focus on thier strengths. Namely Software and to less extent services. Dump hardware, stop making ZUNES and Xbox and create chassis specs for these devices and let electronic manufacturers make these under thier name. Make these devices the best by making the software more powerful and functional. Use services to tie the software togeather rather than creating competition for your partners. Future windows should be scalable and power most of these devices (Windows everywhere) but not three screens and cloud it should be 1000 screens and cloud. Watches, Huds, CAR pcs, they need to find the next markets and create the need rather than playing catch up. PCs are stagnating, but Consumer Electronics are getting smarter and can fill the growth gap nicely if they embrace it early.

Four Extensability and Standards. If you look at most successful products from Microsoft and some other vendors you will see some interest trends. One is that they have a lot of third party attachments (office, Photoshop, Visual Studio, Firefox, ect) Embrace that, make it easier and more efficient to extend thier products rather than create alternatives. IE9 is a prime bad example. Extensability is limited to tool bars which most never use because they simply do not add much for the amount of room they take. Windows Phone could possibly be epitome of extensibility if they get the deep linking right and keep implementing it deeper into the system. APIs that allow third parties to extend the OS and MS programs with little overhead should be the future of all products.

Five Compete and partner. Sevices like zune store compete against many of Microsofts partners, This is Ok in these occasions as the market was not being adequatly being addressed. However you need to recognize that these services could turn your partners into new competors. So inorder to mitigate this they need to spin the stores into thier own seperately managed divisions that have little influence on the company. Second they need to allow access of those competetors equal access to thier platform.

Six, Freedom. Allow other services to compete with thiers completely, no lock ins. Make your services the best because they are the best not because you have locked them into it. People will feel better about thier choices if they don't feel like they have to use your service because it is the only choice. Apples path may seem like it is working but in the end the walled garden will only grow discontent even if the services are top notch.

I think out of all the suggestions, the most instrumental would be Sinofsky moving up the ladder. I don't have anything against Ballmer but it's clear he isn't the one to keep the behemoth -growing-, just rolling. The company needs a technologist like Sinofsky, who's more than proven his worth turning around Windows after Jim Allchin and the Longhorn fiasco. I believe, given the power, he could instigate a lot of changes.

As an added bonus: he actually has a personality. Bill Gates would drone monotonously making it hard to pay attention even when he was doing a cool demo. Ballmer's better, but there's still a lot of droning and he just looks so awkward plonked in the background of a stage while someone else is talking. Sinofsky always holds my attention though, I think because you know he knows what he's talking about, he seems genuinly enthused by some features, and he's not afraid to go off-script (although it may be on-script, just well delivered) and make some jokes... which are actually funny.

In a sentence: I'd go for a beer with Sinofsky, and I think I'd have a good time, probably come home with some schematics drawn on beermats. I'd go for a beer with Ballmer, but I think I'd just want a shower once I got home.

Your advocacy of SteveSi for the leadership team is at odds with your recommendation to start over for a device OS. MS was doing just that, and J Allard (and possibly his boss) were pushed out due to their insistence on incubating that project, largely because Sinofsky didn't like it because It Wasn't Windows.

Also on Russinovich. Decent OS researcher/reverse engineer. One of many who've learned Windows internals, one of few who knows how to market what he's learned. Not a technical visionary, tho. Look elsewhere.

Branding: agreed wholeheartedly. Putting "Microsoft Windows" and "Microsoft Office" in front of products that aren't, but might be accessory programs a user of the main program might be interested in, is lame. I think the original idea was repetition of the primary brand. Problem is, if the primary brand doesn't have a good reputation, this isn't helping you.

Be a business software maker: Yes, but your analysis of consumer sentiment is off the mark. They're not using Windows because it's the best OS. 3 days with a Mac shows even novices otherwise. The latest of the converts, a security guard, was in my office last week chattering happily about his new Mac. Consumers are using Windows for one or more of three reasons. 1, because it comes with the cheap machines that are available everywhere, even drug stores and groceries. 2, because it's what they learned to use at work or at school (watch out as Apple makes inroads in both). 3, because they need to use certain programs (legacy corporate apps, MS Office programs and certain CAD programs spring to mind) that aren't easily available on a Mac or iPad.

Heterogeneous world, port to it: It's still too early for that strategy. See point #3 above. Ports could accelerate adoption of those alternate platforms, and MS needs to milk the cash cow of Windows a while longer. Don't get me wrong, I want Office on my Android phone and iPad as much as anyone. At this point, MS still has too much to lose by putting it out there. If I were them, I'd have a very locked down internal effort to port to those platforms, to learn how easy/difficult it is to do for the future. But I wouldn't go further than that until the market is close to having a competitor. No, OpenOffice isn't it, and the Apple productivity apps aren't either.

Scrap Steve: with you on that, as are many frustrated employees.

Overall, a good article. Embrace the cloud, move more quickly, sweat the details... yeah.

I'll caveat "embrace the cloud" with mention of how PC's in offices replaced dialup timesharing in the 80's and early 90's though, because business realized buying their own PC's and running a PC network was often cheaper than paying a service provider.

I don't AT ALL agree that renting services from a vendor in the cloud is cheaper, TCO-wise, in the general case than running your own. It's cheaper when your processing power needs aren't constant (you're retail and want to upscale quick for Christmas and scale back on Jan 10), or you need 2 hours of massively parallel computation a week to compute some statistics, or you have 600 5-person offices around the world who need access to a corporate intranet, or your domain gets lots of spam and you want a provider to filter it out before you pay for it to use up your email bandwidth, or if you're a small business that can't justify even one network staff member but is large enough to need maybe a dozen PC's in the office.

Otherwise, medium and large scale businesses have run the numbers and have generally found an advantage to keeping things out of the cloud -- the company intranet if 80% of staff are in the same 1 or 2 locations in big cities, databases for reasons of performance, media for reasons of large bandwidth consumption and charges when it's updated or accessed. Even some large-scale data crunchers I won't name that use cloud services for that crunching still run their own web servers and content distribution networks, because they can do it cheaper and prefer knowing that if there's a security issue, they're not dependent on someone else to detect and address it.

Microsoft would do well to look for the cloud sweet spots and focus on those instead of trying to be everything to everybody. I think the original Azure (before it became kitchensinked) was this, but (sigh) the marketers didn't understand enough about it to be able to market it. Without the right marketing spin, all customers could see was that Amazon has more services, and the cloud became a game of checking off checklist items rather than "right sizing".

MCS has an army of consultants. This is an advantage people like Rackspace (OpenStack), AWS and Google services don't have. Teach MCS how to sell this stuff. Teach them WHO to sell it to, and who not to waste time on. Just some advice on this: a cash-strapped 300-user company with a mature software distribution model for purchased apps and all users in two physical buildings on the same city block, with very little travel occurring, and with XP on the desktop due to legacy apps not ready for Windows 7, is not a good target market for Office365, kay?

I think "Sweat the Details" is everything. Faster boot times, fewer reboots required for software security updates, easier driver configuration, more intuitive control panels, lower resource requirements, improved Search (and Search in Windows 7 is phenomenally good compared to much earlier versions of Windows), easier to navigate websites, easy to understand licensing, etc...

Windows Server is a joy to use once it's set up properly. But I work at a small shop, and making heads or tails of CALS and Terminal Server Licensing is such a headache that we gave up and moved to Linux servers. Paying Microsoft $100 a seat, or whatever, would be fine - that's a tiny portion of our tech budget, even for a small company like ours. But having our small tech staff spend 5% of its time monkeying with licensing instead of getting real work done? That's unacceptable.

I wanted to take Windows Azure for a spin. I couldn't make heads or tails of the documentation. I just wanted a virtual machine image up and running that I could log in to it and play with the options. If there's a "How-to" for that on their site, I couldn't find it! How can you build a cloud service without making that feature dead easy to use?

I used to develop for Windows CE. I met some of the CE team leaders once. They were polite, friendly, helpful, and clearly focused on making their product as good as they possibly could. I respect that. But the MSDN website documentation was awful, every time I did a web search on something I found the useful explanation on a third party website with links to the appropriate API on the MSDN site. This was nine years ago, maybe things have improved.

Microsoft doesn't need to make any fundamental changes to their lineup. They just need to focus on making the stuff they already have incrementally better.

Via Daring Fireball via salesforce.com

"Our flagship, Sales Cloud, continued to crush the competition in the quarter. Microsoft’s desperate strategy of underfunding, pricing with undifferentiated and highly proprietary products basically has had the same impact on our business as the Windows tablet and Zune did against the iPad and iPod. We call Microsoft’s strategy, “the Zune strategy”.

It’s the concept that they can take a proprietary, undifferentiated offering at a lower price and somehow make an impact on a high-value, highly differentiated product that’s loved by customers. Microsoft has not changed our exceptional win rates or affected our average selling price with this Zune strategy."

It's that branding thing, perceived value and customers loving the product.

The well-known "If Microsoft Did the iPod Packaging" video makes a similar point.

The problem isn't that Microsoft can't make decent products, it's just that that can't figure out which ones to make and how to market them.

Paul -

Great set of notes.

One additional thought: the underlying problem for Microsoft, going forward, is that it's neither the work of one man (Steve Jobs) pushing a singular vision nor of a large collective (Linux).

It's stuck with what used to be the best model for product development, skilled, ordinary folks getting paid to make things, led by other skilled, ordinary folks.

Microsoft has to figure out how to tweak and tighten the traditional model, and when it starts to get successes, follow up quickly.

Scott A.

Paul,

I enjoy your articles, but this one kinda struck a nerve. So I'm gonna rant a little bit.

I manage 2,000 windows domain computers at work. But I'm also a HUGE Microsoft home consumer, and I'm getting really tired of their half baked ideas and stuff that just doesn't make sense. It's like someone smacked them with the stupid stick. Like the earlier Zune software that wouldn't recognize their own .dvr-ms recordings. Pure aggravation.

I'm not gonna rehash all the foolish things, because everyone reading this already knows that's well documented. But I will say this: There isn't ONE company that has an end to end home solution that "just works". Not one. Apple doesn't have a home server that's worth a quarter, nor do they have a media center. Solaris has nothing. And neither does any of the Linux variations. The closest one, with all of it's shortcomings, is Microsoft. They are in the best position to capitalize and overpower the home market, but they're blowing it, with all that talent and money.

Before I proceed, consider this: Apple isn't just a Unix OS developer. They have hardware made to their specs to put it on. And now that they use Intel processors, MAC OS runs on OTHER hardware too, and Windows will run on a MAC. Who would have thunk it? What Microsoft needs to do is use this to their advantage.

This is what I want to see: ONE line of hardware. Get some STYLE. Some SAVVY. Just like the XBox. Go out and partner several companies to build specific computer cases, pads, whatever. Partnering with Nokia was a great move. BUT, it will fail if they leave the Nokia logo on it, or keep calling it Windows Phone 7, or if they even PUT the current WP7 OS on it.

Make a stylish Home Server. A dedicated Media Center. Make a couple models of each to choose from, and price them UNDER APPLE'S! Match the styles with a phone, a pad (even bring back Courier!), and a music player. A couple choices of a multi-function printer (even Dell uses Lexmark for God's sake).

Now, sever the server OS from the freaking business side. Stop thinking "it doesn't work with what we have" and start thinking "make it do EXACTLY what the home consumer needs", WHICH INCLUDES DRIVE EXTENDER. Why should it matter if they have two separate server products? I refuse to believe, that with all that money and talent, that it's too hard to manage both.

Then, get Windows small, and get it tight. Make it work across these home devices WITHOUT the stupid errors or prompts. Think Grandma sitting in Starbucks showing off pictures or video that's streaming from the Home Server, or watching LIVE NEWS or recorded TV on her device. Or print from it wirelessly. Or sync a calendar and contacts with Grandpa's device WITHOUT having to plug it in to something. THERE'S YOUR TEST. Hire a real, live Grandma and Grandpa during development if you have to. BUT GET IT DONE.

All it takes is for one person to imagine holding a device in their hand, sitting in a lounge chair or at a rest stop, and imagine all that it could possibly do, and make it happen. But it's not happening at Microsoft right now, and it won't happen with Steve Ballmer.

I think you have the wrong solution. According to old tech giant life cycle they first have to hire an ex-Ceo from Pepsi. For example, Steve Reinemund. Then they have to get some unknown person from europe or asia to run things, some whiz kid that has risen through the ranks. Finally they have to get some executive from the tech industry, but not one with any relevant experience.

After all that, Bill Gates will sigh in disgust and be forced to return.

I'd like to add one other thing.
Microsoft, you are a global company, now start acting like it. Stop with all of your releases being very US-centric, and start releasing all apps and features wherever your products are sold day and date with their launch. I am quite fed up of seeing that because I am in Canada, I don't get access to nowhere near as many as the features or apps on the phone that the US does, (and I am sure all other countries feel the same way). And this doesn't just go for Windows Phone, how about Media Center, why is there no native support in Canada for OTA broadcasts, or for Xbox Live, why do I have to pay more for less content? It doesn't make sense to me. I know Microsofts response will be something along the lines of "copyright laws and obtaining licenses and permissions from the other countries and blah blah blah", but how come iTunes is able to do it and you can't?
Coming from a user who is not in the US, it really feels like all of your efforts in other countries is really half assed.

When it comes to naming things they should perhaps talk to others or get inspiration from the likes of NASA,inspirational names, they should really think out of the box their office is in. NASA used names like Saturn V, Delta, Endeavour, Discovery, Cassini, Pathfinder, Apollo, Aquarius, etc. They didnt say 'The Lunar Module has landed' they said The Eagle has landed.' Excellent metaphors. Car manufacturers use the same idea, I like Fords names, Focus, Mustang, etc. Come on Microsoft, get creative with the naming.