Last year (sometime during August, 2006) on Jim Cramer's Mad Money show, Microsoft was recommended as a "buy" as he believed that the bad times had passed. However, I was sceptical of this and one can argue that my scepticism was correct as there has not been a huge rise in Microsoft stock after the release of Vista. At the time of writing (20:41 GMT, 24/03/2007) the share price is $28.02 compared to $24.40 last year August when I first wrote about this topic.

Microsoft's performance on the stock market has been disappointing to say the least especially after their first consumer OS release since 2001. Unfortunately for Microsoft, though, Vista has not delivered anything ground breaking. On the surface (i.e. what the end user sees and experiences) there is nothing new, except for the interface, regardless of how code may have improved and changed "under the hood".

It is not like Windows XP cannot be themed to appear like Vista, either, as there are many themes and mods available for this (including the start menu search) available for free or at a small price (compared to purchasing Vista).

Of course, there is the claim of improved security... however...

User Account Control is a very annoying "security improvement" which will most likely lead to security issues. UAC will ask users for permission before installing programs, web browser plugins and running programs (among other things). This sounds great, until you are actually having to put up with the constant requests for permission and find yourself automatically clicking yes.. and at some point this automatic yes could well be to a malicious program. Fortunately, this "enhancement" can be disabled, so instead you can feel safe and secure by installing good anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall software (or alternatively use what Microsoft provides with Vista... if you feel brave enough!) that will quietly and effectively manage security for you.

At the end of the day, though, an Operating System is only as secure as you make it and treat it - the user is always going to be the weakest link.

As for Internet Explorer 7, which has been released for a while, there is still a long way to go until it can compete with Firefox 2 and Opera. While there have been some improvements with regards to handling of CSS, the feature set is still far behind other browsers.

Until Microsoft releases a ground breaking product it looks set to under perform on the stock market. Perhaps there is a long term plan and some amazing business products are released which revive their stagnating stock.. but I would not hold my breath.

I am happy to see that Big Blue (IBM) is only improving. There's no doubt this is the kind of company Microsoft to aspire to be in order to survive in today's market.