The Old Economy: Chrysler is Too Big to Fail. The New Economy: Microsoft is Too Big to Be Prompt

Courtesy of Valleywag, a saucy blog that covers the down and dirty of software and hardware chiefly in California's Silicon Valley, comes a report that Microsoft is again delaying the debut of its new Windows operating system, named "Vista."

It's a classic p.r. problem, if not a nightmare: Over promising and under delivering. Microsoft is legendary for doing so.

Back East, when I was growing up, we used to say that the timetable for the Long Island Railroad was the best fiction published in America. With New York suburban railroads running mostly according to schedule these days, the "best fiction published in America" now seems to be news releases from Microsoft announcing timetables for product releases, especially operating systems.

In the Old Economy, we said Chrysler was "too big to fail."

In the New Economy, we might say that Microsoft is "too big to be prompt."

They can get away with it. All of us with corporate or personal incomes lower than Bill Gates Jr. and Microsoft, respectively, cannot get away with it. We'll lose every time we try.




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