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Ballmer's farewell
  • 11 Replies sorted by
  • Good bye Bully

  • @stonebat

    He is good guy. I am really not sure if "proper" manager is better idea.

  • He can be a good guy. Problem for Microsoft is he lacks any kind of vision for taking the company to new places. Not being an apple apologist but MS lagged behind in innovation. I think of them like Canon. They got lucky. Right place with the right product at the right price. They sold a bazillion windows machines to the business sector and from there into everyone's homes.

    Since windows 7 they have been much better at playing the marketplace. Too little, too late probably. There is an entire generation of kids who think of MS as their dad's computer. I guess you could call it Oldsmobile sindrome.

    Just my 8 cents.

  • He can be a good guy. Problem for Microsoft is he lacks any kind of vision for taking the company to new places.

    Do not start usual flame :-)

    As for me, I use Windows Phone, and have two touch enabled Win 8 devices :-) Nothing against them, if you just work and do not talk about your tools, they work wonderfully.

  • :) not trying to start a fire. Like I said, since Win7 MS is putting out great stuff. I love windows phone and Win8. I worry it's maybe too little to late for the younger generation to latch onto Win products is all.

  • OK :-) Perfect, we agree on it.

  • Btw good chart

    image

    k4.jpg
    800 x 417 - 63K
  • I would buy a used Nokia Windows phone if I didn't have a phone already. Balmer was maybe not the Baryshnikov of hitech.

  • I would buy a used Nokia Windows phone if I didn't have a phone already.

    I have Lumia 920 now. :-) Btw, from Windows phones Huawei W1 is also not bad, better than entry level Nokias.

  • Columnist Cringely wrote an interesting thing about Ballmer in his book "Accidental Empires", of the moment Microsoft was poised to take over IBM as the big name in computers. http://www.cringely.com/2013/03/31/accidental-empires-chapter-16-but-wait-theres-more/

    So Ballmer took a chance. He borrowed everything he could against his Microsoft stock, stock options, and his every other possession. In all, Ballmer was able to borrow $50 million and he used every cent to buy more Microsoft shares. This is radical behavior for a PC executive. ...Ballmer was betting his entire fortune on Microsoft. This is the only instance I can recall of such behavior. There’s something about betting every penny you have in the world that helps with focus, and Microsoft has been very focused during the 1990s. As a result, Steve Ballmer is now Microsoft’s third billionaire, joining Bill Gates and Paul Allen. His shares have increased in value by twenty times since 1989.

    He bet the farm and then some and it paid off. His shares also increased about a billion dollars the day after he announced his retirement.

    The book was written in 1996 so it's a bit dated, but it's a great primer on the era and you can read it in full on Cringely's site.