Joe Wilcox Quotations

I wouldn't call it anti-competitive in the sense that Microsoft has made it very easy to change providers. On the other hand, Microsoft could have made it easier still... I don't see why it didn't avoid making problems for itself by making it drop dead easy to find another provider.

When I look at Linux, the playing field isn't level because Microsoft is the incumbent.

My concern is that Microsoft has introduced too much complexity, making more difficult the arduous purchase decision process. Microsoft is right to get information out earlier, because evaluating an Office purchase will be much harder for businesses this release cycle compared to Office 2003 or XP.

My expectation is that Microsoft's entrance into the security product market will drive out many of the smaller vendors within 24 months.

Nobody's infrastructure is the same, so it's unrealistic that you could do a vanilla survey that fits everybody.

Many of them, particularly if it's a bigger drive, will come with backup software. That really simplifies things for the user.

Mobile browsing will take off in the U.S. when the data rates come down. When we hit a certain threshold, the scales will tip and people will rush to buy.

Shortages like this are one of the effects of Apple keeping announcements quiet. Many companies will begin moving product through the channel before an announcement. Sometimes you'll even see Microsoft software on store shelves before it's announced.

Old habits die hard. Microsoft would really need to communicate the benefits.

I would not say this is a sign of great openness. It's more like establishing diplomatic relations between two countries, rather than opening borders.

I'd be shocked if we saw a scenario where a bunch of people went out, bought Macs, and only ran Windows on them.

From my perspective, I'm not sure why a new organizational structure is needed to accomplish that.

From a latest and greatest perspective, some customers might be feeling bah humbug about their Christmas purchases.

But we'll have to wait and see how that actually works.

But it's hard to get excited sometimes when your company delivers increasing revenue quarter on quarter, yet you read hype about Apple and their products and they get all the buzz.

Linux use doesn't go beyond file servers or print servers because the applications aren't there.

Linux vs. Windows TCO studies are great business for analysts and wicked sales propaganda for companies, but I don't think high-tech vendors or their customers should take much stock in them.

Look at the auto industry. Do people fault Jaguar for selling fewer cars than Dodge? ... Opera in some ways is a Cadillac browser. You have a lot of extra features built in. The volume might be with the Caravans and the SUVs, but that doesn't mean there isn't money to be made on the other vehicles. Of course, the analogy here is with Web browsers.

Real was the only protagonist left in the EU case, so the settlement should help with Microsoft's appeal, since the problem involved appears to have been fixed,

I think cost containment is the wrong priority for making technology decisions. You should be thinking about the business.

It is meant to be an idea factory.

Lifestyle is changing, with greater emphasis on context. It used to be that location defined work and home life. That no longer applies. Even people that work in an office sometimes take work at home.

It is an opportunity for Apple to go out and evangelize the new Intel processors to developers and nudge them to get more of their applications out of the door.

I think it's too bad in a way. I would have liked to see a new Windows Media version for the Mac, and have Microsoft take the media battle to Apple's home court.

Windows Live is just the first step. Microsoft is building out all of its existing products, cross-connecting different features around communications and social networking.

Microsoft has made more of a demarcation of versions around features and capabilities. If you look at Professional and Home, the major difference was networking. Now with the new line-up there is a fair bit of differentiation around features.

Microsoft hasn't done a good job of marketing and needs to improve ? and the timing is crucial,

Microsoft is at this juncture where it's the victim of its own success.

Microsoft is caught between a rock and a hard place. It does not want to be dependent on a major rival but on the other hand, Overture provides a significant amount of MSN's revenue.

Microsoft's best marketing for Vista will come from simplicity -- making the value of Vista as easy to understand as possible, so people can look and say Vista is a lot better than the version they have now, Are there too many of them to communicate the value of Vista?

Microsoft will more aggressively compete with longstanding partners because the company is at a crisis point. It has to find new reasons that'll convince customers to upgrade.

Microsoft would certainly benefit if say a Comcast or some other broadband providers with popular portals chose MSN as the default search.

Microsoft certainly looks after its employees, there's no question about that. They're hiring, they're adding staff.

Microsoft definitely is making progress. The UI is more refined, but by no means finished. Microsoft has finally reached the point where IE feels like a modern browser.

Microsoft didn't say how much source code would be licensed. Contrary to some news reports, I expect the amount of source code to be fairly limited.

Microsoft had tremendous success with larger businesses, but that market has become very saturated.

Microsoft has a good story to tell. It doesn't always do a good job telling it.

There is a lot of developer and consumer interest around these applications.

The reality is that most of Microsoft's partners are also its closest competitors, but that's nothing new,

We are reaching a point where the search engine becomes the basic interface for everything on a PC or computing system, including launching applications or files as well as finding information.

The real test for Microsoft is whether it can take search to the next level.

While most companies understand the need to archive e-mails, they often overlook the need to archive instant messages. If there's a security breach with respect to messaging and the company doesn't properly archive the messages, it could lead to compliance problems.

What these services do differently is protect the messaging environment.

We've got new versions coming next year. And Microsoft has the tough sell of convincing existing business customers and consumers that what they have isn't good enough.

Unlike Windows Vista, I also don't see any major disturbance caused by 2007 delivery of the next Office version. Microsoft is smart to release both products together.

Do you do things to enable your partners, or do you do things to compete with them? Microsoft's approach is to do the latter.

Corel is targeting the small-business market, which typically has 20 employees or less. This is a market that Microsoft has had trouble reaching because it's fragmented and has diverse business needs. Product loyalty is not as great and cost drives a lot of purchase decisions.

When you own a shopping mall and someone sets up a small business alongside of it, you still own the shopping mall.

Assuming there may have been, or may be, talks between AOL and Microsoft, the timing of the (Yahoo-Microsoft) announcement may have been intentional to influence those presumed discussions. AOL has to decide does it want to work with the Microsoft camp, go its own way or form a strategic alliance with someone else.

Conceptually, it sounds good. Execution will tell all.

Conceptually, the changes all sound pretty good. The test will be the execution. We'll see how everything works.

It would be huge for Microsoft if it could dispatch its problems with Europe,

The three products launched today are the first wave of a tide of tightly integrated products. While some Microsoft executives have said that Microsoft bet the company on Windows Vista, the real bet is on integrated innovation.

The question to ask is: Who will care if Microsoft misses the date again. I've been saying since the (March) delay that from a sales perspective, January might as be July, that January release builds in room to move the date again, if needed.

With some applications you notice the emulation more than others. The applications may not be as responsive when you first open them. For the person that bought the Intel-based Mac and is looking for that performance increase, the bigger bang will come from the native code.

When you introduce something new, it disrupts, and this increases things like help desk costs and employee downtime. So, to get to the benefits that come with this, they have to get past whatever retraining will be needed around the new user interface and any hardships around the new file format, which are always disruptive. These are two big hurdles Microsoft has to get around.

There are legal services for downloading music and movies,

The rules are different for Microsoft than other companies.

What Wallop is trying to create is a service that introduces 'real world' visual cues about the relationships to the online community.

The Opera folks are betting their browser has reached a threshold of popularity where they can unshackle it from the fees. This clearly is a volume play that could pay off if enough people use the browser. Opera would be able to drive revenue through affiliate relationships, for example.

Some people might speculate that Opera couldn't compete by charging when AOL, Apple, Microsoft, Mozilla and most other browser developers give away software for free. Not so. Just the opposite is true,

Both products reached the 'good enough' threshold a version or so ago.

So, to get to the benefits that come with this, they have to get past whatever retraining will be needed around the new user interface.

Companies talk all the time, even about mergers that never happen, and word about most of those discussions never gets out. Just because this one leaked out doesn't indicate the earnestness of the discussion.

Emulation is slower, sometimes much slower, than applications that run natively.

There's a different emotional attachment to Office than to Windows. The operating system is like the road, but Office is the car you drive. People have emotional attachments to their cars.

The response to Opera's free offer was probably a catalyst in this position. It may have confirmed a strategy that the Opera folks were already thinking about.

There's long been concern about privacy on the Internet. What's different now is there is more criminal activity on the Internet.

There's money to be made off browsers, in part because of search. The browser may be a giveaway, but it's a freebee people use to access content they are willing to pay for or advertisers are willing to subsidize.

There's no question that Microsoft needed to do something.

There are a number of ways Opera can make money off the browser, but all that requires volume. Removing the price tag and the banner ads increases the likelihood that more people will use the browser. More eyeballs means more revenue off the browser without charging for or putting banner ads in people's faces.

This is phase 2. Phase 1 was withholding certain things, such as downloads. But that wasn't going to make sure that people get legal, so they went on to the next phase. Now Microsoft's going to remind them at boot, when the system wakes from sleep, that there's something funky about their Windows.

I'm sure it's not lost on Microsoft executives that the world's third largest computer company is from China. Microsoft has a problem: PC growth is highest in emerging markets like China, where software piracy rates are high. China deals could be construed as generating goodwill, which Microsoft would want to use to gain greater Chinese government cooperation fighting piracy.

In emerging markets, consumers are more likely to own a cell phone than a computer, so they get to the Internet through their phone. Data use is not as advanced in the United States.

If Microsoft hasn't significantly improved that experience, and made it as easy as Apple has, that's going to be a big barrier.

I'm kind of skeptical about its ultimate usefulness.

In the U.S., only about 60 percent of consumers have Microsoft Office on their computers. That's a lot of opportunity for sales there. They have a pricing advantage. It offers comparable, or better functionality for less. For the consumer and small businesses, value and price will be major factors influencing buying decisions.

It used to be that the corporate network was totally separate from the home. Now we have a commingling of network roles, of devices, of technology, and of user behavior, and all of that increases the attack vectors open to hackers.

On a zero-day exploit, it is kind of tough to move fast enough.

Once an individual or company makes an investment in Windows, buys the software, and continues to spend money on upgrades, it will not suddenly shift to Mac.

The Office group is known for running a pretty tight ship, so if he can bring more discipline, that could be very beneficial to future versions of Windows.

The Office leadership is known for getting things done. While the Windows and Windows Server groups are renowned for product delays, the Office folks tend to ship pretty much on time. There appears to be tighter execution and control.

A system that will run Windows Vista may not be capable of using all of its features.

If you run Windows on a Mac, it's another copy for Microsoft. Better yet, it's on a competitor's hardware. It would be like Microsoft taking it to Apple's home field.

How can Microsoft reasonably promise to do more in Europe when it presumably isn't doing enough in the US?

Any time anyone asks for your credit card number online when you already have an account, consider that to be a fraudulent spam mail.

Anything is possible, but just because it's possible, doesn't mean that it's feasible. It's not that they can't do it, but can they make it successful.

Are they going to knock Apple out of the sky? No chance. Not anytime soon, anyway,

Any company that offers a platform or pseudo-platform needs to be cautious when it begins to compete with partners.

A number of developments are happening on the Internet that AOL couldn't ignore.

AOL has some great content that is broadly appealing to consumers. One thing that Microsoft lacks for MSN is a lot of good content.

Advertisers looking to extend their brands might think twice about being associated with products that could create disgruntled customers,

The EU wants licensed code to be available for use in open-source and free software, a request Microsoft has resisted. I would be shocked if that position has significantly changed.

You can play semantics and say that the operating system is shipping in 2006, but if consumers can't buy it until 2007, PC manufacturers don't have it to sell to them. This blow falls on the partners.

You could look at it from the perspective that the responses mean there's a problem that needs to be addressed, or it could also be indicative of how much more interest there is in the use of the browser, ... No feedback and then problems occurring later on is a bad situation. The best situation is the release candidate goes out and people respond and say, 'Wait a minute! What about this? What about that?

It's the psychological barrier. There are people who might be interested in a Mac who wouldn't have bought one because they're afraid they might need Windows.

It's not the optimal situation, to be launching the next-generation version of Windows right after the big holiday sales season.

It's not something I expected from AOL, but it's the right direction at the right time.

There will be lots of new stuff, which I can't talk about right now.

They don't just want it to look good, they want it to sound good, too. Why have the boring PC 'beep' when even the basic sounds of the operating system can be an experience?