Uhhh . . . wow. Hi, guys.
Hello.
Glad to see you finally stopped nagging me on AIM and via e-mail some years ago.
Looking back, I didn't nag you enough. Someone had to. There are lots of webmasters and companies who could only dream of having the kind of visitors and community you had back then.
Take
this page for example, I made it for a friend, because his MMO-addict guild buddies had a shitty ass free forum.
I designed the new one so that community members can post stuff directly on the front page. There's always a risk of someone posting a cunt on there, but that's negligible. Having user-generated content is vital to the existence of a website.
Dudes. Why are you still doing this? Microsoft is the dying, bleeding horse carcass, and you keep kicking it. Why? Shit, at this point Apple is more deserving of our scorn. And I say this as the owner of an Apple reseller.
Oh, fuck it. In the end, all these corporations will assrape us and go laugh all the way to the bank. We're fucked no matter what.
This website is still online because I know people who use the Alternatives list on the front page. Also because a friend likes reading old topics here. This website is on a hosting I share with a large web consultancy company, so there are virtually no costs. Why not keep it available?
I agree that Microsoft is dying. Lots of creative (or shallow) people use Macs, I can play tripple A games on my Linux machine, and more consumers are buying Chromebooks because there are tired of malware.
There are a few things where Microsoft is still thriving:
1. Business
There is no good alternative for Active Directory. ClearOS and Red Hat Enterprise come close, but not nearly enough.
Microsoft Office is also the best Office suite.
The only good alternative I see for business is going cloud with Zoho or Google Apps.
Not every business wants their corporate secrets stored at some company though.
2. Xbox 360
Those fanbois are annoying. They play on a broken console, and they pay Microsoft € 5 a month for the right to play online.
Still they think that their console is better than the others, because Halo is the greatest game ever *ahem*.
This device creates a lot fans of Microsoft amongst teenagers. Who will grow up becoming IT managers and buy Microsoft products galore.
3. Surface
Yes, it's getting popular.
So no, it's not dead yet.
As of this website, the day will come when someone at the webconsultant company accidentally the whole thing.
Then I will be too busy working, getting drunk at a metal concert, going to a LAN-party, etc. to pull it back up again.