It depends of your definition of cool. Microsoft still host some very cool projects and I think many programmers would be very happy to work on stuff such as K

It depends of your definition of cool. Microsoft still host some very cool projects and I think many programmers would be very happy to work on stuff such as Kinect, Bing and Seadragon to only name those. However, if you're talking about general perception toward the company, then the answer is a big fat NO. I think too many people have been burnt with their tactics over the years and those stigmas take time to heal. For all things that microsoft has contributed to the advancement of computing and its vulgarization, they are also responsible for stalling in many areas where they couldn't catchup fast enough, using their influence in oft-questionable ways. Lots of bad karma there and very uncool. They managed to mess up the single most important application, the browser, and did nothing to fix it for years, just because they could. Web developers are only now coming out of this nightmare. Today, I'm very reluctant to even use something like Bing, that admittedly works quite well, just because the thought of what microsoft could pull, once it gets back into a position of power in the search market, makes me shudder. I know most people have a notorious short memory span when it comes to such things, but count on people like me, with the ability to hold a grudge, to remind them what hell felt like. Microsoft isn't cool and it won't be for a while.