Some you missed

You missed a few escapades fromthe grey boxes that seem to be at least partially successful for MS:

1) XBox. You might contend that the 360 is not doing that well, but it set its aim at beating the Playstation and so far it has crushed it. Yes, the Wii is selling like hot cakes, but so is the PS2, and the wii can be said to be fighting last generation console war while the XBox is winning the new generation, even if this generation is not yet as popular as the old one.

2) Pocket PCs. While it is true that the pocket PCs are becoming less of a necessity as the smartphones become more prevalent, MS won the game on that one hands down, and lots of devices are being sold even now.

3) Servers: OK, you might call those grey boxes (though most are actually black or dark brown) but they are different boxes placed in different environments and owned by different people. And it is a clear win for MS, and even a very profitable one.

4) Terminals: Putting Windows remotely on dumb terminals, some of them even running non MS embedded operating systems was a clear win for MS and away from the classic PC model.