According to reports in the Financial Times and its sister publication Les Echoes, Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft is considering whether to pay a one-time, $10 billion dividend to shareholders, among other options. This would represent the largest single payout to investors ever made by a company.

What to do if you had well over $46 billion of free cash flow, interesting position to be in, don't you think?

especially interesting given microsofts claim thay are losing so much money due to piracy.

None of that matters now, iss.

Microsoft already have so much money and own so much that even if they never released another software title again, the money will keep rolling in for decades.

I believe that a lot of this money should be earmarked for making the PC a better machine, and Windows a better operating system for it.

IMHO, a percent of that money should go to charity funds or something like that, maybe if the government/world union could incentivate somehow so that MS shareholders could also get benefit and not just give it away.

Bill Gates actually does a good bit of charity work (Or at least his foundation does anyway ).

That's right, I did know of Bill Gates foundation... what I was thinking about was MS as a corporation to donate, that should also go to other companies with big cash flow although I imagine few or none enjoy MS' wealthy state.

How many MSFT shareholders do we have around here? I'm one.

Maybe they could drop the MSRP of XP Pro to $69 and XP Home to $49. Their claim, back in 1998, that all their integration and innovation was going to lead to lower OS prices appears to have been a lie. With prices that low they'd never have to worry about Linux again.

I think that'd be a great step to take on MS's part. I dont know the retail price for WinXP, but i've seen the WinXP upgrade for $150. If you ask me, thats alot considering its not even the OS!