Microsoft Is Making Some Serious Money!

Bill Gates and Microsoft are making some serious money!

This thought occurred to me when I was reading one of my older Microsoft manuals.

Microsoft provides a lot of helpful tools to help you with your computer problems. They provide direct assistance with a Microsoft Technical Engineer as well. They have a policy where if you still need answers to your technical questions they offer standard no-charge support for retail versions of their Microsoft products.

However if you are seeking help after hours then that is when they will start to charge you. If you require support after normal business hours then you have to purchase "Pay-Per-Incident Support. In the United States that is a fee of $35 per incident. In Canada the fee is $45 plus tax per incident. The support fees for calling their 800 number will be billed to your credit card. If you call their 900 phone number your calls will appear on your telephone bill.

If you have a problem that you think will take more than one phone call then you can purchase different accounts. For example for making 10 calls the cost is $295.

Now remember I said that this information was something that I found from one of my older Microsoft manuals. I don't know if this information still applies today. But I bet that when this manual came out people were using this service - the one(s) where they had to pay the fee - I bet that they were using it a lot!

This is yet another example of why Bill Gates is so rich!

Yahoo Briefcase To Close!

Here is a copy of an email that I got:

Dear Yahoo! Briefcase user,

We will be officially closing Yahoo! Briefcase on March 30, 2009. Until then, we are offering you the opportunity to download your files back to your computer. You will need to take action before we close, after which any files remaining on Yahoo! Briefcase will be deleted and no longer accessible.

To access your Yahoo! Briefcase account, click the link below:


http://briefcase.yahoo.com/

If you are a Yahoo! Briefcase Premium subscriber, your current subscription will be canceled on March 30, 2009. We will refund the unused portion of your Premium subscription, if any. The refund will appear as a credit via the billing method we have on file for you. So please make sure that your billing information is correct and up-to-date. For more information, please visit https://billing.yahoo.com.


For additional information or to review a list of our frequently asked questions, click this link


We appreciate your being a Yahoo! Briefcase user.

Sincerely,

Yahoo! Customer Support



You can find out the reason(s) why Yahoo is closing their Yahoo Briefcase by clicking here but the main reason they are closing it is because the usage of it has gone down.

A Nine-Year-Old Has Passed Microsoft's Certified Professional Exam!

If that don't beat all!

You can read more about this story by clicking here!

Personally I don't think one has to go through the enornous cost involved with being legitimately certified - but hey that is just me!

Are You Still Using A Dialup Modem For Your Internet Access?

Then don't you feel bad because there are still a lot of people who are using a dialup modem for their internet access. Not everyone can afford the added expense of having a broadband internet connection.

Just think about it. If you have a dialup modem for your internet access that means that you are basically just paying for your phone bill and paying another bill for your internet service provider.

I was thinking about this when I read a blog post about AOL raising their fees!

Let's just face it - not everyone can afford to have a high speed internet connection!

Microsoft Wants To Buy Yahoo!

I wasn't going to blog about this because I figured that it was on the news so much that everyone probably already knew about it. But today that headline was staring me in the face so I decided to post a blog entry about it.

Just in case you haven't heard - Mircosoft wants to buy Yahoo for $44 Billion Dollars! First of all this online article says that Yahoo was never even up for sale - Microsoft made them an unsolicited offer!

Here is what is also kind of surprising is that (so far) Yahoo is not selling! The article says that while Yahoo's stock is going down they are still very popular and are still generating advertising revenue.

Just because someone offers you Billions doesn't necessarily mean that you have to take it! And that's what it seems Yahoo is doing. The article goes on to say that Microsoft could still be able to buy Yahoo by going to Yahoo's board of directors.

I have often read about and seen on television stories about big takeovers but in this case - so far - Yahoo is refusing to sell.

From Flat Fee To Number Of Hours Used?

source
Yahoo News

"Time Warner Cable Inc said on Wednesday it is planning a trial to bill high-speed Internet subscribers based on their amount of usage rather than a flat fee, the standard industry practice.

The second largest U.S. cable operator said it will test consumption-based billing with subscribers in Beaumont, Texas later this year as a part of a strategy to help reduce congestion of its network by a minority of consumers who pay the same monthly fee as light users.

The company believes the billing system will impact only heavy users, who account for around 5 percent of all customers but typically use more than half of the total network bandwidth, according to a company spokesman.

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Personally I feel that as soon as you have a good thing going somebody comes along and ruins it! I remember when AOL switched to a flat rate and they got so inundated with people who wanted to sign up using the new flat rate that for a time AOL was bogged down.

Now comes news of an ISP provider that wants to bill according to usuage. I don't see this having a very good outcome. It just seems that they are wanting to try to charge more.

Call me "old-fashioned" but why would they want to mess with something that is working?

Of course the answer to that is that they want to try and get more money!

XBox Troubles

According to the article the XBox has needed a lot of repairs and Microsoft has spent a lot of money repairing them! Microsoft is also going to offer an extended warranty on its XBoxes.

Because of multiple complaints by consumers Microsoft "looked into" the matter and found a number of hardware problems.

Microsoft's stock decreased during the last period but it was not sure if the problems with the XBox were the cause.