I saw a program about Bill Gates and comments made by (I think) an IBM exec was that he was a better engineer than the engineers in the room, he was pretty close on the legal technicalities and there was a suspicion that he was the best business man in the room.

What M$ needs is someone with a fundamental understanding of IT and the business brains to harness and steer the M$ behemoth. As written earlier, those sorts don't grow on trees.

Perhaps what M$ needs most of all is a CEO who is a good team builder. There are lots of talented people in M$. One of the most talented CEOs I ever worked for never seemed to do much but somehow managed to hire extremely strong direct reports and stop them stabbing each other in the back.