Good morning. I hope the Tablets are working, but I also hope they won't be too distracting.
We're going to start out with a topic that we've touched on at every CEO conference going back to the very first one in 1987, and this is talking about IT and its role in corporate competitiveness: What are some of the key issues, and what are some of the key opportunities?
Microsoft's view on this has been pretty constant throughout. When it became over-hyped, we were a little concerned about the promises that were being made during those times. At this stage, in a sense, you could say it's almost under-hyped, and a good example of that is that there are various articles that have come out. The Economist said "Paradise Lost." Even IBM, the other largest company in our industry, talks about the post-technological period. The most extreme was probably the Harvard Business Review sort of suggesting that railroads and IT had a certain similarity, and now that the tracks have been laid, there was no competitive advantage to be had from having better IT systems. The New York Times said, "Has technology lost its special status?"
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