You are looking at Mr. Steven A. Ballmer: the biggest man at Microsoft now. CEO of the company, Ballmer has a lot of decisions to make like how many versions of Windows 7 to pump out. He also has to deal with seeing Microsoft’s stock stay steady for FIVE YEARS and also keeping an eye on the nice Microsoft stockpile of cash. Even a super company like Microsoft can see losses and, in fact, they already have for the first time in 23 years. It’s not solely from the horrible economy we’re all in (except for the Australians), but they still lost sales. So in a time of economic downturn and wanting to help boost American jobs, what does Ballmer and some buddies want to do? The opposite.

Of course, he could just be full of hot air and be doing this for a PR stunt (Ballmer? PR stunt? NEVER!). The fact of the matter is that I doubt he’s just pulling our leg.

On May 4, President Obama announced that he intended to “crack down on companies ‘that ship jobs overseas.’” There’s a bit of background to this and it primarily deals with large technology companies. When the tech companies have a large portion of their income come from overseas, they would invest the earnings overseas, avoiding local U.S. taxes. In the last few fiscal years, HP, IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, and Google alone saved a combined $7.4 billion in taxes.

Well, that’s pissing Obama off and he wants change (take a shot). Obama’s new proposal is to tax a large chunk (if not all) of the foreign profit these companies have, something Obama thinks will raise around $210 billion over a 10-year timespan.

It makes U.S. jobs more expensive. We’re better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S. as opposed to keeping them inside the U.S.
-Steve Ballmer

While I disagree more often than I agree with Obama, this mindset of Ballmer’s is idiotic to say the least. In the current state of the economy, we need American jobs. These jobs are what keep the economy strong by not only keeping Americans employed, but by fueling the community around it as well. The local restaurants, movie theaters, malls; they’re all affected by big business. We’re seeing it now with Detroit going under and we may see it happen in Silicon Valley and Redmond, not to mention spreading throughout other parts of the world.

Now, of course this wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if Obama wouldn’t have had yet ANOTHER taxation idea to take to Congress. In any case, if the proposal goes through, you can expect more job losses in the States. While a billion or so being taken from the companies in taxes may not seem extremely large from these mega-corporations and even a blessing to some, the 1-3% increase in the amount of taxes paid could mean the difference between keeping all the jobs or losing a lot to overseas areas. Where would this leave you? Well, if you work for these companies, possibly unemployed.

Obama reasons that U.S. companies will create more jobs in the United States if there is less of an advantage to setting up operations overseas.

Yeah… And for the companies that already have a presence in foreign countries? Guess they’re just screwed. I mean, relocating everybody out of the U.S. is better than higher taxes, so why not move the entire operation centers out?

So, will Ballmer’s “threat” change Obama’s mind? Doubt it. It’s Ballmer after all. If Obama’s plan goes through, will we see domestic job losses contrary to Obama’s belief? A good possibility. I fear this is not the last of the clashes we will see between Corporate America and the Government.

Sources: [CBS5, E-Commerce News, Bloomberg]

So, by now you have hopefully heard about Microsoft’s new OS that’s now in beta. It’s what Windows Vista should have been. It. Is. Windows 7.

Now, if you know me, you know I love Apple. I love OS X. Basically anything that is Apple, I probably love it. It’s the reason I am an Apple shareholder. But now, I am proud to say that I am a Microsoft shareholder and have been for some time.

Windows 7 takes flashiness and style and brings substance to it. Yes, it looks a hell of a lot like Vista. Some may confused it (minus the Start-bar) with Windows Vista on first glance. Now, small disclaimer: I never really used Vista for more than 15 minutes, so a lot of this may be in Vista. Excuse my ignorance. I never wanted to use Vista, but Microsoft has gone and done something right with their PR: they’ve spun Windows 7 into their most hyped product in this decade, and for good reason.

I installed it on my MacBook Pro on 1/14/08 and have used it primarily instead of OS X Leopard. In the past 72 hours or so, I have used OS X for about 5 hours while Windows 7 was on for the other 67 hours. Why? Perhaps it’s because it’s something new and I want to use it. Perhaps it’s because I enjoy shiny things (which Windows 7 definitely has a lot of shininess going for it). But also the fact that I enjoy using Windows.

I never really enjoyed using any version of Windows, namely XP. I never really enjoyed using Linux. Yes, I do enjoy using OS X immensely, but Windows 7 is actually somewhat close in that range of enjoyment I have in using my computer.

Microsoft rates that my Windows Experience about 4.9 out of 7.9. Well, in that case, my experience of using OS X is about a 7.5 and using Windows 7 is about a 6.0. There are a few subtle nuances like Dashboard (Gadgets is no comparison), Expose, and Spaces that I just love about OS X Leopard. Granted, there are third-party option replacements for Expose and Spaces, but they just don’t integrate like Apple is king at doing.

The Aero interface is updated a little in Windows 7, namely in the taskbar. Now, if you really want the old style, you can choose small icons and have each group separate by window, but Windows 7 does window management a little differently. Let’s say you have 5 Firefox windows open. Instead of having a separate buttons for each Window, you just hover over the programs icon and you can choose from there which window you want.

There are a lot of things that I’m impressed with in Windows 7, but if I wrote about all of them, it would take two days to completely write about them. This is only part one of the series, so expect more posts. Just a word: if you want to install Windows 7 on your own, you can download it here, but don’t use it as your primary OS. If you do decide to do so, nobody is responsible for any downtime or problems you may run into with data loss except yourself.

And in case you wanted to know, I wrote this entire article in Windows Live Writer: part of the key Windows Live series that I’ll divulge into more later.