The New York Times has published an interesting write up of Microsoftis annual financial analyst meeting. We were considering a general-interest reference article to the Timesi coverage until we noted one specifically interesting tidbit concerning Microsoftis own estimation of Windowsi robustness. According to the article, Mr. Gates says that 5% of all Windows installations crash more than twice a day. From the NY Times:

Mr. Gates acknowledged today that the companyis error reporting service indicated that 5 percent of all Windows-based computers now crash more than twice each day.

Unfortunately, there is no information in the article about how many Windows-based machines crash one or two times per day.

Other interesting notes in the Timesi article:

• Microsoft will spend US$6.9 billion on R&D this year. By way of contrast, Apple will gross close to US$6 billion, and spend somewhere in the neighborhood of US$500 million of that in R&D.
• Microsoft claims some 600 million customers. Apple has claimed some 25 million Mac users for the past several years.
• Despite recent rumors, the company will not be spending any of its US$49 billion in cash holdings on a dividend (nor in acquisitions).
• Microsoft is intent on pursuing the "growing" security market. [Editoris Note: The article suggests that Bill Gates sees security as a growth industry, while seemingly ignoring that it is Windows security issues that have largely made that market what it is in the first place.]
• The company may charge for some Internet-delivered updates to Windows and/or Office in the future. Currently, these are free updates.
• Microsoft wants to compete with Yahoo! and Google.

There is a lot more information and detail in the full article from the New York Times. We recommend it as an interesting read.