in the past few months my company has had more than a few requests by accountants now coming to us trying to get office 2003 rather than the new 'improved' office 2007 as they hate the ribbon. one or two have now jumped to open office 3 as while it is different, so is office 2007 but they prefer the ui in openoffice 3.

we program in vb at work and their development systems are equally bad when we can knock up a fully functional program in a few hours in obsolete vb6 but the same program will take weeks in superduper all bells and whistles vb.net as its documentation sucks.

If you told anyone 2 years ago that a company would be selling Linux on 10% of a line, people would have been over the moon. There was no Linux pre-installed before Asus brought their baby to the market (or barely) so anything would have been a success and Im sure that hoping for double digit penetration would have been seen as a pipe dream.

The paths to using less familiar software is the same for Linux and Mac (id say even less for Linux since you are bound to find a desktop and/or distro that is suited to your tastes) and apart from a few habits, it is rather painless.
Linux is even more painless when it comes to price and gets a bonus for reliving old computers.

Vista 7 will be just like service pack was before, it will make the software finally usable but is it enough to stop the Microsoft spiral downwards? Doubtful.
Microsoft has too much money, political clout/payoffs and leverage to die off. Anyone who thinks this is dreaming. However, like every great empire it is crumbling left and right. Netbooks are one very visible chink in their armour but not the only reason.
Linux offers both a choice and a leverage against Microsoft, something that they are not used having to deal with. Like you said, they sold many licenses but did they make profit on them?

The open source model and SAS are something that is now firmly entrenched in the tech world and Microsoft has to deal with it as well as the OS moving to the web and making the monolithic OS of the past not necessary.

Ive used Linux at work for about a 8 years while working on servers and some of the modifications I did at work even made it in some GPLed software and I use about 3-4 OS every day. Linux wasnt ready for mom and pop even 2-3 years ago. It is now.
You can install Mandriva, Mint or Puppy Linux like I did for family (old P2 and P3s) and they can get online and do what they want right away. It works.
But the real secret is the fact that it is CONSTANTLY evolving and getting better and better. It took Redmond about 7-8 years to release Vista and it will take 2-3 years to get service pack Vista 7 out. The Linux kernel on the other hand is CONSTANTLY worked on and its mods and improvements added quickly and regularly. The eye candy like Compiz is already a top level and the desktops are getting better and better (KDE being the cutting edge one that has moved ahead and changed its whole infrastructure).
When Vista 7 comes out, that's it. No more changes until the next OS or some future service pack. If any new comes out till then in terms of technology, it will have to wait until the next time they feel they can get money out of clients (same with Mac).
Linux can incorporate things in the kernel, desktop or software when its ready, NOT when they can fit it in their next release cycle.
When technological advancement are released when ready, technology advances faster.

Vista 7 will be good like XP service pack 2 was.
But it wont be enough. The rules of the games have changed and now free (and free) is also good. Throw in the marketing savvy of Apple for quality computers (well, its the same hardware, Im talking about the finish/case) at the high end and I dont see Microsoft ever going back to their glory days.
Hey, 60-70% of any market is still exceptional, its up to them to make sure that controlling JUST 60% of a market eventually can still make them money.
If they cant, they deserve to die off.

Then again, back in the 70s and 80s, when the PDP and VAX products were arguably the most popular minicomputers for the scientific and engineering communities, I never thought DEC would disappear either.

Microsoft has painted itself into a corner, its software is no longer compelling, look at how people reacted to Vista, very few felt they had to have it, for most XP was certainly good enough, for others the problem was draconian DRM and the ability to remotely lock out the O/S, which was both stupid and arrogant.

Microsoft is a juggernaut in a world of shrinking revenue, it will either have to reduce its size and prices or invent something so good and so cool that everyone will pay a premium for it. What do you think they will do?

The surprise to me has been that my Aspire One has also partially elbowed aside my “real” laptop – a 12 inch G4 Powerbook – because it's even more portable than the PB and its battery (6 cells) lasts over twice as long.

I'd rather have it all be on OS X (and then I'd not have either the Toshiba or the Acer), but it's not practical for the folks whose software I'm using (various products related to model airplane power systems). Their markets are just too small to develop for OS X (or some flavor of Linux) with Windoze' huge dominance still.

Yes, I tried Virtual PC on my Powerbook…. it worked poorly or not at all with the various applications.

No, the story is in the next lines in that graphic. They are spending too much. Too much on lame ad campaigns that aren't working. Too much on divisions like the Xbox and Zune that aren't making a profit and aren't projected to make one any time in the forseeable future.

Which is why the ax is going to fall and fall hard. Only growing revenue by 5% could be followed by a flat or down '09. Without the promise of unlimited revenue (just set the price of a license to dial in whatever amount of cash we need!) they are going to have to live in the real world.

Pressure on OEM pricing from the netbooks will creep into the low end desktops next. The prices are in netbook territory already yet they are still paying full retail for Vista licenses. It's a side effect of a trend that has been running for about a decade now.

Used to be a PC was about $1000. Moore's law just changed what you got for that $1,000. But around the turn of the century they got 'good enough' and the $1,000 barrier fell. Everything got cheaper except the price of an OEM Windows license. Now it is far and away the most expensive component in a low end desktop or laptop. For a while OEMs worked around that by taking on crapware/trialware/etc for a price to offset the license cost. But it got so bad customers revolted. Plus Microsoft has blunted the appeal by bundling in their own anti-malware solutions.

Seriously. We are talking about sub $200 netbooks here every day or two on the way… but never seeming to make it to store shelves; to date something always thwarts em. But a Sub $200 desktop would be a no brainer if it weren't for the need to include a Vista license at full OEM pricing. Somebody will eventually break that logjam, probably using the same hammer ASUS used, wave the penguin banner until MIcrosoft makes em a deal.

Can you update the link to jkontherun of your “Blogroll”?