MSFT has $2/share in cash. AAPL has nearly $30/share in cash. I would expect MSFT to be around a long, long time. Like Xerox.
A month ago I dumped Windows and now run Ubuntu as my primary O/S on my dual core AMD desktop. No regrets at all. It does take a little tweaking to get Ubuntu configured but I found that Googling online forums will bring up answers to problems quickly. I have one Windows application I continue to run, and that's handled perfectly by running Win2000 inside of VirtualBox. Why did I drop Windows? We have 3 computers in the house and I just couldn't see paying MSFT $100's to upgrade all of the machines to either Vista or Win 7. Plus, I was getting tired of trojans and viruses that were infecting our machines. The more I use Linux the more I appreciate its elegance, its security, the disciplined file structure, the stability... and the lack of viruses.
what drives a stocks price upwards?future earnings growth. If you look at msft stock price it had a huge runup during the 1990s and straight fall during the 2000's. In the 90s people were excited about windows95 and tech in general and the web etc...Nowadays since everybody knows how to surf the web and pc growth has seemed to reach saturation point,nobody is excited about msft's prospects.Nor does it seem that they have any idea of how msft is going to increase earnings growth from windows.Its just been a steady earnings income flow for the last 10yrs.Which isnt so bad but msft doesnt have the same potential that people thought it had during the 90s.Its just another ho-hum stock.MSFT now has to be concerned with losing market share from open source etc. Technology stocks really suck.They all have the boom and bust cycle.All of them.CSCO,msft,sunw even aapl. I was trading tech from 1990 to 2001.It seemed like tech was never going to stop booming.Titans like csco,msft,oracle were going to rule the world forever.Nothing could stop them-ever. These stocks exploded for 1 decade and have now followed that by imploding for almost another decade. Despite the market making new highs in 2007,CSCO,msft,sunw have never even regained 50% of ther 1990s highs.Today they stand 75% below their highs. My take on tech is that former high flyers always stay that way.They never regain their position.Tech gets outdated,replaced by the latest gee- whiz upgrade product and the old stuff is left in the 'boring pile' and is not sexy anymore.MSFT is not sexy anymore and their future product cycle is the same old OS.Im sure it will bounce here but as an investment i have learned tech is bad.Good to trade but pretty ruinous beyond 5-10yrs.