A sure sign of hard times

[gonzo]

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/22/sad-day-for-microsoft-5000-laid-off-earnings-and-revenues-down/

Microsoft is laying off motherfuckers...

[RawAlex]

Actually, it appears to read like the birds of Vista coming home to roost. Just like Windows ME and other odd versions in the past, Vista is the operating system nobody really needed, except maybe the 64 bit versions. So instead of being on an up product cycle of a newer operating system and encouraging people to get more and more powerful computers to run it, they have a product that nobody really wants - except maybe Apple, who have made huge gains by making fun of how truly lame Vista is.

This is the first time in my life in computers (almost 30 years) that I have seen such a wide discrepancy between the lower end and higher end on "acceptable" computers. There are plenty of people still using P4s, not even hypertreaded ones, and at the other end some of us use quad cores or even dual quad cores. People are realticely content with their computing experiences and aren't going wild to move ahead. Microsoft failed with vista to offer a product that would encourage the people on the bottom to move ahead, so well, it fails.

Combine that with a crappy economy, and there really is no reason for anyone to want to move forward. Instead, they can just hang out at their current levels and be happy. WIth 75% of the market, Microsoft suffers greatly.

The continue to hire for areas that are working well.

More freaky is Google laying people off:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20090115-google-closes-down-lesser-known-services-lays-off-staff.html

[LAJ]

Well maybe the motherfuckers deserved it... but what about the good employees there?

[softball]

I upgrade my computer much less often than I did. I am running a 2.40 gigaherz intel core2 quad Q6600 with lots of ram and terrabytes of memory. And Windows XP which works just fine. This is what I edit on and it will work for the forseeable future. I don't like spending money on computers and, like most people, have no need to spend just to have something lightning fast to play games. So Microsoft has become a victim of its own success. Unless the programmes that are coming down the pike absolutely require anything else, then I am done for awhile.
I actually find computers boring and I never get computer envy, that is unless it is lightweight and portable. So I can see why MS is in trouble.

[Evil Chris]

Just create a forum and call it "Signs of the Times".

There are so many as of late.

[boobbucks]

Its supposed to get worse before it gets better. I just hope the credit card companies dont start going out of business. Then we are all in trouble.

[TheEnforcer]

Yup.. definitely worse before it get better.. but it will get better.. just a matter of how long ti takes to get there....

[softball]

Yup.. definitely worse before it get better.. but it will get better.. just a matter of how long ti takes to get there....

Even the local dumpster divers are getting hit. It seems more folks are actually returning their bottles for the deposits. Trickle down in action.