award tour

Microsoft announced today that quarterly net earnings were down 11% to a mere $4 billion. The big headline for the story though is that the company is laying off 5000 people. The Seattle Times has a ton of reporting on the story and breaks out the employment numbers a bit better here and here. The scoop is that 1400 people got canned today and the majority in Redmond. Around 5000 full-times will be let go in the next 18 months but they still plan on hiring 2000 to 3000 new people in the same time. I’m sure the number would be much larger if you count the contractors who aren’t going to get renewed contracts (”The layoffs, along with salary freezes, the elimination of contract workers, lower marketing spending, and other measures are expected to reduce operating expenditures by $1.5 billion this fiscal year.”)

The bad news for the Seattle economy is the fact that Microsoft is now delaying all construction on the expansion of their campus.

And one interesting remark from Techcrunch on the news: “Microsoft’s Web business nearly doubled its operating loss to $471 million. That loss was on flat revenues of $866 million. Not a good sign for the health of Web advertising.”

Lastly, Microsoft stock is off 9% today, down to $17. Amazon releases quarterly numbers a week today. I’m very interested to see how the holidays went for Seattle’s other big tech employer.

Microsoft launched a new set of ads to follow-up there Jerry Seinfeld sports. The new ads take the Apple “I’m a Mac” ads head-on. All three ads are linked up here in this techcrunch post. Essentially, the ads start with a John Hodgeman look-alike who says “I’m a PC” and then shows a mosaic of people who say they’re also a PC. It includes you’re average person, an astronaut, Bill Gates, Pharell, a hipster, a teacher in Africa, a guy in the Artic, etc.

It’s interesting that Microsoft took on the Apple ads head-on with a message of “Billions of people use PCs and you can be proud to be a PC”. Though I think the ad is well done the problem is that I have never really seen someone be passionate about Microsoft products. The only exception I can think of is game developers who use Visual Studio, people who use Excel for everything (and that’s just cause they’ve used it forever), and people directly or indirectly on MSFT payroll. That said, all of those cases pale in comparison to Mac and iPhone users.

That said, the ad is quite effective if all it does is give someone piece of mind while buying a computer that “Ya, it’s alright to be a PC”.

Ram mentioned on his blog that he’s looking for a “mouse that doesn’t suck“. I started writing a comment in response, realized it was getting really long, and decided I’d just post it here.

I also spent a lot of time looking for a good keyboard and mouse. The keyboard part got easy when Apple launched their latest keyboard but their mouse, the mighty mouse, was just not for me. It’s horrible small, which cramps my hand, and I’m not big on the tiny scroll wheel.

So my requirements was a mouse with bluetooth (i didn’t want a stupid dongle taking up a usb port), rechargeable (i didn’t want to deal with batteries), and preferably as large as possible to fit my hand. This left few options. I went with the Microsoft Laser Mouse 8000 and I’ve been very happy with it. Though oddly expensive at the time ($80 I believe) I managed to get it from the Microsoft Store (thank you Boris) for $50.

Configuring it on OSX Tiger was a real pain in the ass (you had to install it manually as a random bluetooth device) but when I upgraded to OSX Leopard it worked perfectly. The 4th and 5th buttons on it are off to the sides are rest perfectly under your thumb and ring finger. I use those buttons for OSX’s Expose and Spaces, respectively. The one annoying button on the mouse is the scroll wheel. It’s one of those scroll wheels that also has left-right scrolling (which i never use) so using it to click is near impossible (so I never use it).

I use the mouse at home (so not 8 hours a day like at the office) and since November I’ve probably only recharged it a half-dozen times. It comes with a recharging base so I don’t have to deal with batteries which is quite nice. The mouse is also a decent size. I’d still want it bigger but I didn’t any that were.

Basically, if you want a quality rechargable, bluetooth mouse I’d recommend the Microsoft Laser Mouse 8000 (what a terrible product name).