Oh, at a technical level (ie. a corporate IT department as you mentioned) this is fairly true. But what unalone was saying, it's not about the under-the-hood t

Oh, at a technical level (ie. a corporate IT department as you mentioned) this is fairly true. But what unalone was saying, it's not about the under-the-hood technical stuff in marketing, it's about a consistent story. If you can't join the dots with the user experience (and don't get me started about Powerpoint, Visio, Word and Excel in their 2008 iterations, with inconsistent look+feel, different behaviours, ribbon/menu inconsistencies) it's hard to sell this story. Customer loyalty is a similar story - tactility, gorgeousness, smooth transitions from product to product (in an experiential sense, not how well COM+ interaction works) all trump weird unresponsiveness, beige-boxyness and uncomfortable mental transitions. And perhaps this is one of the key issues for Microsoft - they're a technical organisation that has grown too big for obsessive and fanatical and consistent design to be implemented. MS Marketing must weep, unless they are too close to the issue too.