Dead weight of MS software

This article is too optimistic in its time scale. I can see that GNU/Linux and free software is clearly on the rise throughout the IT industry and increasingly on consumer gadgets, but Microsoft still has a huge install base.

Here in the UK it looks like the large majority of companies and public organisations such as schools are all-microsoft shops. The sheer dead weight of MS software, like a ball and chain shackling computer users, means that MS isn't going away any time soon.

However, MS faces big challenges in the immediate future. It's entire business model, which once was thought to be impregnable, now looks shaky and dated. More importantly it's losing mind share amongst developers - the most vital resource of any software company. Despite recent OOXML success (from MS point of view) it seems highly unlikely that the company will be able to continue to rely upon office productivity software as a cash cow. Vista has also not been well received, and MS badly misjudged market trends in assuming that software bloat would continue to be acceptable (which turned out not to be the case on the new netbooks or ULPCs, which require compact and efficient operating systems).