As I personally have notice, Microsoft has a dive-in type of marketing strategy. It seems to me that they are just putting in new products in the market almost every month just to compete with other products. One product for example is their Zune. They definitely weren't all too prepared to beat Apple's iPod who was meticulously planned for it's first release in 2001... Microsoft plan in my own point of view is to gradually make their products better by releasing updates as time progress. Well, I think it is still working, regarding how huge the company is right now.

I think you're right, swoosh.

I'd be curious to find out how short of their expectations that Vista fell.

I'm sure Microsoft was expecting to make more of a splash in the market with that product.