Looks like the referenced article is: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/SiliconInsider/story?id=88655&page=1

It's hard to argue with a feeling, but I look at some of the same things mentioned in the article in a completely different light. Longhorn's delay, in addition to being partly due to a complete code review, makes sense in light of the fact that people still run 9X and NT4. If your customer base hasn't made it to the 5 year old product yet (W2K), then you're really only irritating people by dropping in new versions all the time. Same with SQL and Exchange. We've still got a couple SQL7 servers we haven't made it off of and we finally turned off our last Exchange 5.5 server this past week. Do I immediately want to start moving to SQL 2005 and Exchange the Next? Not especially, since the current products are working for us (and I know that's always subject to debate).

But I look at a lot of other things that Microsoft is doing as a company. Buying anti-spyware and anti-virus companies. Proves to me that they're serious about security and will do whatever they can to secure their products (without winding up in another anti-trust suit).

For personal use I can pretty much go with anything that'll run a browser. But in the office, as an IT person, it's a little different. It's all well and good to complain about the frequency of security updates, but they give you tools to efficiently apply them and I never feel like I'm playing Russian roulette when I do.

My 2 cents about the whole thing. If they're a sinking ship, I sure hope that somebody else learns from what they're doing right, rather than shunning it all because it's got the M$ name associated with it.