Actually, it appears to read like the birds of Vista coming home to roost. Just like Windows ME and other odd versions in the past, Vista is the operating system nobody really needed, except maybe the 64 bit versions. So instead of being on an up product cycle of a newer operating system and encouraging people to get more and more powerful computers to run it, they have a product that nobody really wants - except maybe Apple, who have made huge gains by making fun of how truly lame Vista is.
This is the first time in my life in computers (almost 30 years) that I have seen such a wide discrepancy between the lower end and higher end on "acceptable" computers. There are plenty of people still using P4s, not even hypertreaded ones, and at the other end some of us use quad cores or even dual quad cores. People are realticely content with their computing experiences and aren't going wild to move ahead. Microsoft failed with vista to offer a product that would encourage the people on the bottom to move ahead, so well, it fails.
Combine that with a crappy economy, and there really is no reason for anyone to want to move forward. Instead, they can just hang out at their current levels and be happy. WIth 75% of the market, Microsoft suffers greatly.
The continue to hire for areas that are working well.
More freaky is Google laying people off:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...off-staff.html