Microsoft Buys Skype...

[billybob476]

It's been that way since Office '07 at least.

[Bryancd]

I wonder if it will reflect in the shares?

Immediatley, the shares of MSFT are down 1.43% today. the dollar cost isn't that big a deal, MSFT has a TON of cash, so this purchase will only slightly lower the shares. Meanwhile e-bay is up 2.45%, thanks to MSFT.

[QuadShot]

I'm sorry. They are GIVING it away even cheaper now.

http://www.microsoft.com/student/en/us/office/default.aspx

Microsoft Professional Academic: 79.99 for the FULL version that includes
   
   Word 2010      OneNote 2010
   Excel 2010      Publisher 2010
   PowerPoint 2010      Access 2010
   Outlook 2010

Oh and the upgrade to Win 7 Pro is 30.00 ...

Yeah they are really trying to empty the pocket of the students.

Not to ignore your other post, but I have never seen Microsft Office that cheap for students.  Years ago I had to go through a third party and verify I was going to high-school before they'd even bring it to $85 with 03.  So that must have been a recent change...

King

Tim, as you know, Joyce and I work for a University here, and for as long as I can remember, MS has offered software for dirt cheap. In fact (no lie) we can get Office 2011 for Mac for $9.99. The deals are there, you just need to know where/how to find them.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

No way am I going to quote both you and Billybob but:

Billybob:
1) I still think the Ribbon design requires a lot of work.  Maybe its fixed in 2010, idk, but I still hunt around for the right settings and buttons after years of use.  That should be way more intuitive than it is right now.  

3) IE8 was terrible.  Even Safari screamed past it in terms of performance and speediness.  Heck, it still lags my Desktop when I start it up.  IE9 granted was a jump of an evolution...but....IE8 has always lagged the crap out of any desktop or laptop I've ever used with it and that is quite a number.  Firefox and Chrome took over the browsing market because of Microsoft's complacency...

X:
1) Microsoft must have changed because I've always had to go through third parties in order to get discounts.  Also, those discounts do not help out High School students.  (Not to get too confused, but that's when I bought Office 03.)  And when it came to 07, I needed Outlook, and none of the Student-editions offered Outlook at the time.  I have since moved on from Outlook so you are right, they offer them at discounted prices, but not back then.  

2) Vista should never have been released and people that bought new laptops/desktops at the time of Vista had to get Vista because the stores quit selling XP (no doubt to force Vista upgrade down their throats).  Don't release public betas.  

3) I've already covered that above.  

4)  idk, considering that its the software that's giving me the problems, I'd say its Microsoft's problem.  

5) You must be the luckiest person on Earth then.  No bugs whatsoever with Windows?  I have never found one computer ever with Windows Software that is never bugged corrupted or otherwise.  No, not including viruses here.  

6) It was a constant problem till a couple months ago.  

Xbox doesn't equal an iPad.  iPad has actual educational properties I can use towards it, XBox is a gaming system.  So yeah, I have no budget for an XBox, nor a Wii nor a PS3.  Simply because I just don't have a gaming budget, it is no reflection on the Xbox.    

I thought Windows Live was a paid for service or am I thinking of something else?  Must be thinking of something else....

So if Windows OS isn't buggy and crashy, how come so many people I talk to constantly have issues with their laptops and desktops with Windows software? 

Btw, I am using a custom-built Desktop.  I only mentioned the laptop because I used to own one.  But the experience is just the same as it was with XP, as it was with Vista, and with 7.  A fragile OS that crashes on a whim with bugs that plague it all the time.  And no, its not viruses, Its been checked and rechecked for viruses.  Sorry, this paragraph is going off on a ranting tangent....

@Al: Never seen it for $9.99, and I've spent years hunting through my local college, the bigger colleges and websites for that cheap.  You must have a better system than Oregon.  

King

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Heck, yesterday I had to go into the registry system of my desktop to fix a broken registry file with my user account information on it.  I hadn't done ANY hardware or software changes when I went to sleep the night before I woke up to the problem.  It was lucky I could even fix it, because for most people who have the login-to-temporary-account problem, its unfix-able for them according to the forums I had to visit.  

So what's that, a bad hardware problem? Right...

My apologies, I'm starting to get into belligerent/angry mode, I'm going to get some water to cool down before I post again...

King

[billybob476]

Heck, yesterday I had to go into the registry system of my desktop to fix a broken registry file with my user account information on it.  I hadn't done ANY hardware or software changes when I went to sleep the night before I woke up to the problem. 

So what's that, a bad hardware problem?

King

Bad drive, bad ram, bad video card, bad NIC, bad power supply, a combination thereof. On my old Dell machine the on board network card was going bad and kept blue screening me. After some research I figured out what was going on, got a PCI network card and the blue screens stopped.

I'm not saying Windows is perfect, it isn't. Nor is OSX, any flavour of Linux, OS/2 or any other OS in history. Heck the integrated OS on my Sony Blu Ray player can crap out (and has).

[X]

King, after reading what you wrote, I think, and I say this with the best intent, that you seem a bit clueless when it comes to Microsoft and how Windows works. When I was in high school, Microsoft was offering breaks for students. If you built your system, then you're probably the one at fault and not Windows. Putting the components together is only the first step in making a viable Windows system.

Okay, here is the problem with your statement about Windows being buggy. You're wrong. It probably has some bugs, but not more than other software out there. Vista was not a "public Beta", but it's those sound bites that people like to repeat. Vista was different from XP and the 64 bit had problems, but the 32 bit worked fine. They also worked quickly to patch the problems and did so. By the time it happened, the brand was damaged and there was a fear from many consumers about buying it.

You probably have a lot of family, friends, and relatives that don't keep up with their updates or other things necessary to keep their OS running at it's optimized levels. That's the only explanation that I can come up with. Better still, how about a quick non-scientific survey?

How many people here running Vista or 7 have had serious problem with their OS?

I'm willing to bet that the numbers are pretty low, but most of the people here don't treat their PCs like magic boxes and have an idea on how they work and how to keep them working.

I think there are a lot of people out there that think knowing how to type is all they need to know about keeping a computer up to date. That's the ones that usually have the problems.

As for your custom build ... if you are getting the same problems over different OS ... logically, it would seem pretty clear that the hardware is the only variable that hasn't changed and must have some hand in your problems.

I don't know what to tell you, it just seems like you're blaming Windows and Microsoft for your problem when they aren't to blame. You want reduced prices, they've offered them since I could remember for students. If you can't find those deals, considering that many are on their official website, I don't think that you can blame MS for that. Maybe your school for not telling you, but not MS because they offered the discounts.

And yeah, no problems what so ever on my system, my wife's system, and those of the in-laws that I maintain. I don't know if it's luck or just following the directions of MS and updating when they say to update.

I'll freely admit that when I was younger I had this venom for MS, but as I grew up, I realized that the source of my venom was listening to friends who got their venom from other friends. It was just safer to blame MS for our problems than our own lack of understanding with some things. Then I grew up and learned to take responsibility for my own system. I also learned that MS is designed to work with far more hardware profiles than Apple ever has to. Apple might work better on paper because they don't have to deal with IDIC, but MS does a damned fine job of creating an OS that can run in those conditions.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Its actually not the same problem over and over, I didn't make that clear my apologies, but its always something going wrong.  Yesterday was the registry, the other week it was hardrive not being accessed properly (or a virus, but as none was never found...well).  A while back, my programs would crash for no apparent reason.  Then it went away.  I never figured out what happened. 

Its true, I'm not exactly an expert for this stuff.  But I'm not completely clueless.  The computer goes through its regular updates, just like the rest of the lineup in the house and as far as my immediate family is concerned, the Operating System is setup to update itself and I make sure of it from time to time.  Your probably right in the one respect for the laptops as they were made by Gateway.  A mistake I don't plan on repeating, but even my brother's new HP laptop still has various problems from time to time.  And its...what, 1.2 years old now?  So if you say HP is a bad hardware maker, then why are they allowed to sell their product at all...

Idk what to say about the deals.  Maybe its just simply not offered in our state, idk.  I just know that back then, it wasn't cheap and no deals were ever given to me back then.  So if Microsoft is not to blame, then someone is.  And that still makes me mad that our system works like that. 

Is it possible some of my venom comes from friends?  Chance of that there is.  But after years of frustration with Windows both on laptops and desktops, I am reaching a breaking point.  Its entirely possible I have the worst luck in the world and maybe that's what it is.  The worst salesmen, the worst hardware makers or just bad luck bugs.  idk...

King

[jedijeff]

Put me in the group that I don't see it as a big deal that Microsoft bought Skype. I guess I don't hold to the 90's notion that they are all evil. They are a big company that can probably do something with it more then it is today. I have worked with a lot of Microsoft products over the years, some are good, others not so much, but that is the way for about any company.
Microsoft has come into the gaming industry, and in my opinion they have added to it on a whole, so no reason they can't add to things with Skype as well.

[billybob476]

King have you ever tried flashing your BIOS? In the past that has resolved some low level problems for me. It's a very fundamental update that people rarely remember and something to try when all else fails.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

King have you ever tried flashing your BIOS? In the past that has resolved some low level problems for me. It's a very fundamental update that people rarely remember and something to try when all else fails.

Hmm....no....hadn't thought of that, that might actually fix one of the laptop's inability to keep time problem too...

King

[billybob476]

I remember on an older machine I had BIOS version 6 and the current version was 24! They come out more often then you think.

[X]

King have you ever tried flashing your BIOS? In the past that has resolved some low level problems for me. It's a very fundamental update that people rarely remember and something to try when all else fails.

Hmm....no....hadn't thought of that, that might actually fix one of the laptop's inability to keep time problem too...

King

You should check for that update and any firmware updates that might be out. I know I had to do one for my DVD drives at times

[Feathers]

Not a lot for me to say really. I'll be interested to see why they do with Skype - I'm not sure it's a totally natural fit. However, given the general move to service provision from supply I guess it could be part of a wider plan.

As to the wider discussion, I've never had a problem with MS here. Running Vista quite happily since we've had it with no issues at all and using IE8 since I haven't seen the need to upgrade to anything else. Basically, I just don't get the points being made. Sorry!

[QuadShot]

King have you ever tried flashing your BIOS? In the past that has resolved some low level problems for me. It's a very fundamental update that people rarely remember and something to try when all else fails.

Ok...can't hold back...too much potential for joke....
Well, Tim DID flash his BIOS, but he got caught and is now serving 1-2 years for indecent exposure!! :) LOL