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Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/22/microbite_the_regret_episode/

Windows 7, Bing and security: Mr Ballmer regrets

Steve hopes Microsoft money can buy your love

By Mary-Jo Foley and Gavin Clarke

Posted in Microbite, 22nd June 2009 11:08 GMT

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You can measure the size of a man's regret by how much he spends to make up for his mistakes.

If you've missed your girlfriend's birthday, for example, then that could be a lolcat [1].

If you're Steve Ballmer and you've let Google run away with online search and advertising, that could be [2] $5.5 to $11bn of Microsoft's operating income for the next five years.

Ballmer's already spent billions more than Microsoft would have on R&D and M&A to build Bing against Google. But is it any good?

Then there's netbooks: how do you win the love of PC makers dabbling with Linux on netbooks? Potentially doubling [3] the price you charge OEMs to install your next operating system, Windows 7, on netbooks isn't going to do it - that's for sure.

Better to pretend netbooks out of existence and call them "low cost small notebook PCs [4]" instead.

And what is it with security? Microsoft's re-built and re-launched its online anti-virus service - Windows Live OneCare - as Microsoft Security Essentials [5]. But the service is riddled with contradictions: it won't work on pirated copies of Windows - so there goes the China market. And there's no incentive for OEMs to put it on their machines, because it's a free service.

Reg software editor Gavin Clarke and All-About-Microsoft blogger Mary Jo Foley measure the size of Ballmer's remorse and how it'll take more than a bunch of flowers and a cute kitten to win over the web-surfing public, sceptical OEMs and millions of PC users across the planet.

You can listen through The Reg's player below, or download the MP3 here [6] or the Ogg Vorbis here [7]. ®

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