what they did without a presence-aware collaboration platform), I think the Surface is all they have going for them on the innovation front. Microsoft's foray now into manufacturing hardware (with the Surface tablet) is a massive roll of the dice (not to mention shift in business model -- following Apple's "OS + hardware + app ecosystem" model), and if the Surface takes off, then their ship will start to turn around. It's a massive ship though, with a very large and slow turning circle. But I think many of the computer people who post here overestimate the advancement of a huge number of computer users. I'm not exaggerating when I say I persuaded my accountant to move from MS-DOS and Lotus 123 to Windows/Excel just over a year ago! (OK, this is not normal...!) I know nobody who uses Google Docs who didn't get there via a file shared by me. Dropbox is getting some traction, because it's easier than emailing files around a small office. In my industry sending a PDF rather than an Excel document is considered high-tech, and .docx and .xlsx files are unreliable as a large majority use software too old to open them and never bothered installing the patches! My retired parents use Office 2000 -- reinstalled on to Windows 7, and not working very well! They don't see why they should pay for more modern software -- and SAAS is no good as their broadband is too slow -- and they live an hour