"This is not a media publishing company," says John Dvorak (pictured), referring to Microsoft, "it's a software publishing company." And, according to Dvorak anyway, it's a software publishing company that is "bed-ridden." The company is "not about to stop making gobs of money. It's just that there is virtually nothing interesting or exciting happening," Dvorak adds.

(He does allow one "lone exception" to the tedium - the X-Box360.)

The software giant is "dead in the water," Dvorak says. He then goes on to enumerate the welter of ways in which, in his view, Microsoft is falling short of the mark. The specific signs of lifelessness he identifies are, in summary:

"Vista will now miss the 2006 Christmas season"

"There's nothing particularly new in Office 2007"

"MSN should have been abandoned a decade"

"MSN Search Engine is useless"

"Pad-based computing failed completely to become the dominant form of computing"

"The .NET framework is being killed by Open Source systems that are free and almost just as powerful"

"Microsoft is too easily distracted by and preoccupied with Google"