This is more of an accounting trick then an actual problem. Normally a company would write down a bad asset over a series of quarters to help drive good will fr

This is more of an accounting trick then an actual problem. Normally a company would write down a bad asset over a series of quarters to help drive good will from investors. As MSFT is currently preforming very strongly I think they chose this route (The quarterly loss) so that subsequent quarters when they launch their new products , and more specifically the Microsoft surface. They have good comparison numbers.