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A last comment on Gnomedex 6.0 has to do with my thoughts has to related to MSFT employee comments on Gates retiring, the changing of the guard, office delays, etc…

- MSFT employees at the show were upset about the delay in releaseing Office 2007. I got my Beta 2 copy, and look forward to installing it, and testing it out.

- Most think that Bill Gates retiring is good for him, and the company. For him because he was a “Rock Star” inside the company - he almost gets mobbed on campus, and thus is unable to roam as freely as he should be able to, or would like to. If there’s one place he should be able to roam around freely, unhindered, and not be treated as “special” it’s Microsoft. A few people commented that he must have been somewhat miserable, as he could not enjoy the same freedom to operate as others.

Now that I have some more time, (until tomorrow when everyone comes back from vacation), I think I’ll write a longer post about Gnomedex 6.0, and a couple of non-conference observations. By that I mean things which happened outside the conference hall.

First off, at the Museum of Flight event I was pleasantly blown away when I was chatting with a Product Manager from MSN who complimented me on my blog, and thanked me for writing fair commentary on MSN adcenter, and MSN search, and that one post in particular was broadly enjoyed and circulated interally. I was blown away. Thanks.

I do think that a lot of bloggers don’t give MSFT enough credit for the good things they do. There are things I like, and things I don’t like, and I try to comment accordingly. Overall, in judging MSFT, I would have to say that the things they do well, they do very well, and successfully. One thing on MSFT I have not commented on, is the new MSN Live engine. I actually hate the BETA format where results just scroll endlessly. I find it less functional, and less useful than the paginated views. I’m not questioning the results, just the layout. The old, paginated version is much better. I like to know what page of the search results I am looking at. That allows for context. Paginated results also allows for more ads (which should be a concern).