Melissa Eisenstat Windows Quotations

With the Department of Justice process out of the limelight now, investor attention has been squarely focused on Microsoft's business fundamentals over the past several months. During that time there has been a significant degree of doubt about Microsoft's long-term prospects and, more pointedly, about the success of Windows 2000 and the Internet. We think this quarter's results go at least part of the way to alleviating these concerns.

With Windows 2000 revenues not really kicking in until 2001 and the continued weakness of the business PC sales impacting Microsoft's core business, we expect the fourth quarter to be lackluster, coming in slightly above the third quarter.

What we do see as key are Microsoft's improving business fundamentals, specifically ... Windows 2000 and the Internet.

We believe that Windows 2000 will ultimately be a widely adopted corporate computing platform over the next two years, and we remain bullish on Microsoft's prospects.