Microsoft posts record financial results
I was listening to NPR last night and I heard that as a result of the current virus situation causing increased reliance on the Internet for most people, Microsoft has posted record financial results. Use of their cloud services and (I think) LinkedIn have surged dramatically, and (surprisingly) consumer laptop sales have increased. Microsoft says they completed two years' worth of work in two months.
Any thoughts?
Comments
A lot of companies don't give their employees laptops anymore and force them to use their own. I think that's the main reason laptop sales have increased. Plus, people want to stay connected with family and it's easier to do that with a laptop (most have built-in webcams and long-lasting batteries).
Every laptop sold is a Windows license sold, so it makes sense that Microsoft is making a ton of money.
Not to mention a lot of webapps in use by work at home situations don't work with mobile. Or the user's current hardware is either too dated or "unsupported" by the webapp. So they go on a web store, find the cheapest laptop they can find that is "compatible" and get that "free" one day shipping.
The technology changes I have seen recently worries me a lot.
Over night it has become unacceptable to meet people face-to-face, either a pain or impossible to go to a real store or place of service, at least one store here was refusing American cash, additional push to do some things over the internet rather than mail (although delivery demand shot through the roof), and the way they talk about virus tracking makes me feel we are on the verge of making owning and carrying a smart phone enforced by law.
This makes it much harder for non-consumetards like myself to function. In fact, I was just told I need to take part in a "zoom" meeting, so I guess I will have to see if that runs on 32-bit Windows 10, otherwise I'm screwed. I don't even own a web camera, but they probably don't require that just to watch. I don't know what they are expecting, except everyone expects people to be exactly the same as them.
I'd think that chromebooks would be the biggest benefactor, especially given that some have pitiful specs like 16 GB SSDs. Though I don't think that the general public's perception of Windows has been damaged greatly by win10 in spite of their love of Chrome.
@SomeGuy
Nearly every store has stopped accepting Canadian polymer around here. My university had already stopped accepting it for tuition before COVID-19 was a household name. And my contempt for smartphones hasn't shrunk. Luckily the governmental push for COVID-19 tracking has been almost non-existent but I will certainly avoid any HW/SW that integrates it (as Google and Apple promised).
Zoom client still runs on XP, and an older one works on win2k exkernel (3.5.53922). I use my webcamless T60 and I can still watch and show my desktop contents (actually it doesn't work on 2000 but it does on XP).
Microsoft Teams is harder because the only way to access it on 2000 (only with POSReady crypto libs, not BWC's crypto libs)/XP is through 360 Extreme Explorer 11/12, a Chinese Chromium browser that must be cracked to remove its telemetry (I can't find the working crack so I'm left to fight it with my software firewall).
If you ask me, companies should supply you with the tools you need to do the job. I refuse to use my personal equipment (which wears it out, can run up bills for data, etc) for things like that. The new job I just started just provided me with a smartphone and laptop so I can keep in touch with them.
My company offers people a desktop if they don't have or can't get a machine of their own to connect from home with. We're really pushing people to Chromebooks though, since they can be had for fairly cheap and are very easy to use.
This whole thing has made it more evident to me that the Average Joe considers traditional computers (desktops / laptops) to be outdated or just for work stuff. Their personal stuff, media consumption, general internet usage is all done on their smart phones or tablets.
A lot of the users that brought their computers in to us to help get them set up to work from home told us they haven't used them in years. After they got out of school, they put them in a box in the basement and they sat there, unused. Some even shared the sentiment that when they get home from work, the last thing they want to do is get on a computer again after having been on one all day at the office.
I wouldn't be surprised if anybody that had to get laptops from their companies would be cursed with botched Win10 updates every time. If that was me, I'd much rather be furloughed. Thankfully I have my own that's still alive and kicking after eight and a half years (and have used it for some work of my volunteering place recently).
Regarding Microsoft's (unexpected) achievement however... no comment.
We're at the doctor, and it looks like they forced all patients to wear masks.
When will this end? Eventually people will forget about the virus even if there was no cure.
It is harder to talk with a mask on to begin with. I've never worn a mask, until now.
I wonder what Microsoft is up to right now? They're probably continuing with botched updates that they force on the masses, all while Windows 7 is no longer supported. At least 8.1 isn't as bad as 10.
Windows 2004 was released sometime in May. Read the known issues and weep:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/release-information/status-windows-10-2004
And Windows 2000 is also getting updates, some of which were duds but are being corrected:
https://msfn.org/board/topic/181399-additional-ntdll-functions-x3-fixed-sfx-installer
Quite amazing considering we only seem to have one developer and one tester (who also has "developed" a couple of time zone updates for NT 5.x as a whole), while MS has hundreds of developers and hundreds of millions of testers. And we also don't have source code.
There are a couple of other things MS is doing, but they aren't related to Windows (MSN scrapping human writers/journalists for its news content, as well as a developer suggesting that master/slave are politically incorrect - thus making IDE offensive)
And by this, racism is now seen as the new pandemic but let's not get into that.
Also, the list of issues with the latest Win10 is appalling, but thankfully not as problematic as the original 10 from nearly five years ago.