Today rapped up Microsoft's annual Mix Conference in Las Vegas. The event is office 2016 home and business web focused get together where they talk coding and development with mostly white, geek guys (the only women seemed to be the Microsoft/ events staff), then there's the occasional press person thrown in for good measure.

The coverage the event gets pales in significance to say an Apple event (Apple could open a door and probably still get more coverage) but the coverage doesn't do it full justice because there were some interesting things (see our coverage as follows: keynote 1, keynote 2, Web 2.0 session, Mesh networking).

What I did see during my time at the conference was the stark contrast between the old Microsoft and new Microsoft. The new Microsoft is embracing web standards, providing support for OS X and Linux, and listening and responding to customer feedback. The tech might not always be the absolute best in the market, but its coming ahead in leaps and bounds. I got 20 minutes with cheap office 2016 professional plus Scott Guthrie (interview here) and the talk was refreshing.

And then there was the old Microsoft. Steve Ballmer at keynote two made fun of Apple products, joked about Apple's market share, and constantly justified Microsoft's position based on its domination of the market. No serious talk about moving forward, improving the end user experience with Windows….as long as Microsoft has the dominant market share the rest doesn't matter much to Ballmer. The fact that Apple is selling more buy office 2010 professional then ever because of Vista's issues means nothing to him. Old arrogant Microsoft.