MSFT are impressive in their own way. They don't have the flashy flair and most of the stuff MSFT seem to want us to be impressed by isn't. What I think makes t

MSFT are impressive in their own way. They don't have the flashy flair and most of the stuff MSFT seem to want us to be impressed by isn't. What I think makes them impressive is staying power, long term endurance. They can weather a poor product, tweak it and get to good years after anyone is interested in talking about it. The backwards compatibility culture is part of that. They can keep up a steady pace uphill or downhill and get there. That's impressive. That said, I think Microsoft is very committed to a bunch of paradigms that are real losers. A windows machine, more than any of the "computers" that we have around us seem to be made for use by individuals under supervision and control of IT, in the school or office. I think that's a loser paradigm. The "personal" part of computers is important. I think it works better, and that is relevant in education. The paradigm is hard to kill because it helps them negotiate with school systems and work systems. Microsoft's marathon endurance for dealing with persistent hairiness lets organizations maintain their fragile ecosystems of servers, applications, permissions and such. These might be necessary, but they also pressure Microsoft into building a "faster horse" (to butcher the Ford cliche). Unless they can manage to put below median users in charge, I think they'll ultimately lose the education market. I don't know who will "win" but I think there's an inherent advantage to anything self sufficient and sell sustained, things that don't require a "roll out" or where the roll out is small and contained. Microsoft can do that stuff and I wouldn't even say it doesn't play to their strengths, but I would say it doesn't play to everyone else's weaknesses.