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Summary: The slow but evident demise of Windows and Office, plus more lawsuits, potentially class action

Microsoft's best known cash cow and principal common carrier, Windows, suffers a lot from Vista 8. Microsoft already faces lawsuits, as usual (it was the same with Vista). It's not just Windows but Xbox too brings lawsuits, based on this report which says Microsoft was "defrauding them by letting their children run up massive charges for add-ons to play X-Box Live games online, parents claim in a federal class action." As one reporter put it in his article about Vista 8:

...64 GB version comes with 23 GB of open space. The reason for the difference: space already taken up by the tablet's Windows 8 Pro operating system and various preinstalled apps.

The other cash cow, Office, is also suffering as Microsoft tries to catch up with Google:

For Rent: The New Microsoft Office

Office is one of the great gushers of profits in the software industry, so it is noteworthy when Microsoft starts fiddling with how it charges for its suite of productivity applications.

The writer says: "Why fork over $100 for Office each year, rather than make one payment of $140? Perhaps more pointedly, why pay anything at all when Google offers online alternatives to Word, Excel and PowerPoint that are free for basic versions and cost only $50 a year for versions with extra features?"

This is becoming a huge issue for Microsoft. Microsoft does not even deny it. The latest Vista is the death of Windows domination because Android is now the sales leaders. Without Windows domination, Office becomes obsolete to many. Microsoft knows this. ⬆

"Two security researchers have developed a new technique that essentially bypasses all of the memory protection safeguards in the Windows Vista operating system..."

--Dennis Fisher, August 7th, 2008