I think the fact that Gates went from being worth 90 Billion(1998) to 53 billion(2001), may be an underestimated piec of this equation. Think about it, the company is barley worth half of what it was 3 years ago, I believe that was enough to get some attention and for MS to realize that we, the world’s IT staff, are their non-commissioned sales staff and they have alienated our affections and we have, therefore, stopped recommending their products so insistantly.
I know this is not the entirety of their financial whoa’s but it does make a diference. I bet IT personnel are responsible for the majority share of sales of MS products. Instead of frustrating IT professionals they should be enticing with perks and promotions. A good example would be for every MCSE(or maybe even MCPs) to receive a free, licensed copy of the current and everydown level OS MS has. If we don’t know it, we sure aren’t going to recommend it. I personally am responsible for impacting 150 servers and 5000 workstations and its illeagal for me to have a copy to study on at home w/o spending $3500 on Advanced Server and Pro? MS needs to seriously re-think their marketing scheme.
Maybe if things continue the way they have for MS, we can help impact achange here too.
