In the past 5 years the company did suck and seemed to work only to realise Ballmer-Gates' expensive dreams of investing in a multitude of cash-drainer projects and pay them huge special dividend when Bush cuted dividend taxes. Yes, very bad time to be long Microsoft back then.
Balance sheet reflect the past. Investing is about forward looking.
I'm no MSFT fan boy either. But i tryied their Windows 7 for months on a couple of machine and i got f*** impressed. Huge buzz all over the internet too.
They started to realize that it is useless to try to fight head-to-head against Googgle and cut back expensing so much in that department.
Xbox basicly won the console war this generation if you exclude the Wii, long term prospect for the next generation consoles is bright with their project Natal, and Wii owner (which i am) realising there are no freaking good games on this machine with 1998 graphics!
But you can trade it however the f*** you wanna trade it, i don't care. Was just saying this bad company is becoming good again. You can sell it short term, there is a pullback, big ceilling at the 24.50 level, you can buy it back may be at 23 or 22. But so is the whole market that shouldn't make a big up-move for the whole summer, and you might get bigger swing with S&P futures following the very same pattern than with MSFT.