Once legendary for its piles of cash, it seems that the Vole's money mountain is half what it was two years ago when it eclipsed the sun and the royal family could take a well-earned sking holiday on its lower slopes.

In fact for the first time in five years, the Vole's cash mountain is below $30 billion. OK, it is still a huge amount of dosh, but it seems that the software giant is spending money faster than most supercomputers can count it.

Windows and Office, are still generating large amounts of cash - about $1 billion a month - and the Vole has given its shareholders nearly $100 billion through dividends and by repurchasing its own stock in the past five years.

It is still buying up companies, but these are much smaller outfits and do not need lots of zeros on the cheque to buy.

The company is thinking of buying back a load of its own shares - again. In December Redmond authorised the buying of $29.3 billion worth of additional shares in the next glorious five year plan.