It's been a tough year for Microsoft, but the software giant is finally getting it half right.

Ever since Bill Gates stepped down and Steve Ballmer took over his role, Microsoft has been getting one thing after another wrong. Vista continues to be a disaster both for users and for the company's bottom line. And Microsoft's ad campaign last year, starring Gates and Jerry Seinfeld, is already a model of how not to do television advertising. Somehow, though, after years of stumbling around like a drunken college freshman after an NCAA basketball win, Microsoft is getting its act together.

First, Microsoft has reluctantly -- oh how reluctantly -- brought back Windows XP. Officially, Microsoft has cut XP support. Unofficially, hardware vendors such as Hewlett-Packard aren't going to let XP die anytime soon. You'll still be getting new PCs with XP on them well into 2010, and I wouldn't be surprised to see fresh copies of XP appearing in 2011.

More: http://www.pcworld.com/article/163882/article.html?tk=nl_dnxnws


My favourite part of this article:

It's funny that some people actually think that anyone is "pirating" Windows 7 betas. It's clear that Microsoft is deliberately leaking them to build up buzz around the new operating system. Don't believe me? Then why does Microsoft give away free authentication keys that will let any copy of Windows 7 work? If the company didn't want those copies of Windows 7 out there, it wouldn't do that. This tactic is fairly subtle: By making people work -- but not too hard -- to get copies of Windows 7, Microsoft is leading them to believe that they're onto something special. And since it has been a long, long time since anyone thought there was something special about Windows, this is savvy marketing on Microsoft's part.