Name one innovative Microsoft product made in the last 5 years.

What does it matter? Does it work?

Personally, I don't care who is more innovative, as long as their product gets the job done. Don't get me wrong, VMWare has a great product, but a little competition is good as well.

I know it's fun to bash MS, and it's the cool thing to do these days, but man it's getting old.

Windows Home Server, Windows Media Center, Tablet PC, UMPC... the list goes on.

Microsoft has many innovative products, but people just choose to turn a blind eye and instead focus on the new iPod color or whatever useless "innovation" Apple came up with this week.

I agree entirely with what the Anon said above. Microsoft does innovate well, they spend a lot of time and money on innovation. They may not get it right every time, but they do try.

Even as primarily a Mac user, I think most of Apples so called innovations are quite lame, some of them to the point of stupid. It just bores me to be honest.

Why can't people just accept the good that all companies do in the market, instead of being fanboys for illogical, idiotic reasons?

Bah...............

"Personally, I don't care who is more innovative, as long as their product gets the job done. Don't get me wrong, VMWare has a great product, but a little competition is good as well."

Just ask Netscape and Real Networks how well that works for smaller software houses after Microsoft wants to enter their niche. Microsoft can probably get its hypervisor preloaded on enough platforms, and the corporate IT buyers prefer the big established vendor, so I expect 5 years from now VMware is either totally gone, or mainly in the business of filing antitrust lawsuits...

1. Windows Home Server is basically Novell NetWare from the early 1990s with slightly reduced functionality.

2. Windows Media Center is from 2001, so not within the last 5 years, but are you claiming Microsoft invented television on a PC or what?

3. Tablet PC was created by some other company and only *popularized* by Microsoft. This is precisely what I'm talking about: they don't innovate by themselves, only buy out other companies, license from them or simply "popularize."

I'll stop now because it can go on like that forever and I'm not a fanboy of any kind.

But I wonder what's next on your list of MS innovations? The 104-key keyboard?

In fact I couldn't care less about the whole issue, except that I know next thing they will be trying to do after they release their Super-Hyper-Uber-V will be to make Windows less compatible with VMWare, which is a superior product. And that makes me a sad panda.

@ first AC

that's easy (and ubiquitous).

multi-billion-dollar marketing, complete with bloggers and astroturfing (some to be found on these forums, see Webster Phreaky); coupled with bullying and monopoly tactics (see Groklaw's Jihad documents from MS marketing); topped off with hordes of lobbyists and massive political campaign contributions to buy off governments and standards organizations (OASIS, anyone?).

now, that's what we in the US call REAL INNOVATION (well, some of us call it "lying", and the courts call it "illegal monopoly", but never mind). the academic establishment (MIT, UCBerkeley, etc.), the national labs (Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, etc.), Intel, AMD, Apple, Sun, Xerox, IBM, the open-source movement, etc. - none of them can hold a candle to MS innovation, because they focus on quality, technology and products, which are quite beside the point.

TRUE US INNOVATION is brilliant, aggressive, ethics-free marketing. that's what enables a company to sell buggy, badly designed and executed products, and then sell upgrades to those products, profitably, year after year.

pirate icon perfectly appropriate.

You buy into this.. Dont cry afterwards. There is not one NEW M$ product at the moment bug free! NOT ONE! Expect BUGS and not some simple ones .. BIG FAT JUICY ONES what will cost your 3 times the value any other non buggy ones.