Can anything Microsoft has do all that for free?

When options are exercised, the employee pay the taxes, and the company receives a tax benefit (essentially, the employees are paying the taxes in lieu of the company, but are doing so on essentially free gains, so they don't seem to mind).Microsoft used to make more money in tax rebates doing this than they made selling products, and which would essentially offset all of their taxable profit.

It will likely continue to work just fine for ever, but if you ever need official help (just like Microsoft) and your product is too old - well, tough luck.I've resigned myself to buying new versions every 3 years just to make sure that if I ever need support, it's there.

After reading this, the first thing that came to mind was:Microsoft Windows pulls in about $13B in profit per year with margins of about 80%...Given that, why does Microsoft take 75% of that $13B and put it back into the 40,000 employees, hundreds of products and half-dozen business units not focused on Microsoft Windows?

Used to screen but ended up doing more screening than booking.2. no management company, family takes care of it.3. use craigslist only and a free website through microsoft that drives a lot of searches & bookings.

Looking at a long term chart of Microsoft shows that from May '86 to current, MSFT returned 25,618%.Of course, the #3 horse came in 1st in the 4th race yesterday.

Use the money to take a Microsoft class and your local college.

Not that I really care if you believe me, but I spent a long time at one of the most profitable companies in the world (Microsoft), and despite Tim's repeated jokes about being in "middle management," I was Director level (though Tim is welcome to make any jokes he likes).

Regarding your points about software development...I am working on a contract for Microsoft right now programming a monitor for their Zune back-end monitoring servers.

Mike,I think MICROSOFT stock will hit $50 per share in a couple months.