Microsoft's Top Ten for 2005

1. The European Union antitrust remedies will be ineffectual, and ultimately, overturned.
2. Microsoft will pay off Novell and Real Networks, as part of Redmond's campaign to clean up its lingering lawsuits.
3. Microsoft will add a handful of new countries to its XP Starter Edition program, while continuing to insist that it is seeding international markets for humanitarian, not competitive, reasons.
4. The Sun-Microsoft technology partnership won't advance much, and will show even more signs of unraveling at the seams.
5. There will be upheaval in Microsoft's mobile/embedded devices division, resulting in a change in strategy and management.
6. Microsoft's biggest announcement of the year won't be Yukon (SQL Server 2005) or Whidbey (Visual Studio 2005). Instead, it will be an as-yet-unannounced anti-virus/anti-spyware subscription service for which Microsoft will charge.
7. While it's the server and tools division that has the most announcements on its plate for 2005, MSN will continue to roll out new offerings at an equally rapid clip.
   
8. Microsoft officials will make a concerted effort not to use the "L" word (Longhorn) until September's Professional Developers Conference. But that still won't help Windows XP gain much traction.
9. Microsoft won't let the EU antitrust case or Longhorn-PR lockdown stop the company from continuing to integrate more currently separate products and technologies into Windows.
10. Microsoft will increasingly play the patent card when competing with Linux.